Five Songs About Drinking

This isn’t all-time drinking songs (“Margarittaville,” “Tequilla,” “One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer,“ more or less any song classified country or Pogues) but rather a few lesser songs about drinking I enjoy. In my fashion, I don’t think these are ones that would pop up in Family Feud but my personal favorites, ones that haven’t dimmed for me with pop-popularity and repetition. And although they’re not strictly songs to listen to while drinking, most of them fit that bill anyway. Oh, I have more than five favorite songs about drinking, but I want to save some others for a rainy day, as I might an old single malt. If you have a speedy connection and gumption, you can listen to a watery mp3 of each by clicking the song title.

1. “Gimme That Wine” by Annie Ross and Dave Lambert. For a few seconds, I thought this was Ray Charles when I first heard it at a trendy bar.
2. “Yes I Guess They Oughta Name a Drink After You” by John Prine. The cracker in me loves this forgotten hillbilly tune. Prine never seems to have gained the cred of his 60s-70s country-ish contemporaries, like, I dunno, Neil Young or the Flying Burrito Brothers.
3. “Alcohol” by the Kinks. Yes, those guys that did “Lola.”; they were nothing if not versatile. Sounds like they rustled up a Salvation Army band and a few jugs of moonshine for this one from their Muswell Hillbillies, a sort of concept album about the British lower middle-class of the early ’70s
4. “St. Ides Heaven” by Elliott Smith. Quite a few of this fellow’s songs mention drinking or sadness or both. I like this one because it namechecks 7-Eleven and is about not only being drunk but “high on amphetamines.”
5. “I’ll Regret It All In The Morning” by Richard and Linda Thompson. A sad-sack song by the under-rated English folk-rock duo. The fine harmonies remind me of good times.