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Music - Top Drug Songs

Pro or con, the best drug-related songs. (Top 10 Index)

Champagne and Reefer - Muddy Waters

A rousing celebration of alcohol and pot by one of the finest blues composers ever. Buddy Guy does a nice cover of this song, but I saw Muddy Water perform this (his) song live and, well, end of story. Doesn't get much better...

Heroin - Lou Reed/Velvet Underground

Brilliant music; subtle and sad.

The song's change(s) in tempo must echo the rush and crash of a fix.

Hypnotic.

Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds - Beatles

LSD (Lucy, Sky, Diamonds) - Mainstream song that many still don't see as a drug song.

Needle and the Damage Done - Neil Young

On the liner notes to the compilation album Decade, Young's comment to this song was: "I am not a preacher, but drugs killed a lot of great men."

The Pusher

A Hoyt Axton song made into a classic by Steppenwolf. Michael Stipe (of REM) did a version of this with Nina Cherry; part rock, part rap.

Like "Needle and the Damage Done," an anti-drug song.

First (non-rap) song I ever hear that incorporated rap and made me understand the power of this newish genre. It's like when you hear the French horn at the beginning of the Rolling Stones' "You Can't Always Get What You Want": Not in a symphonic content, ah, that's a great sound...

White Rabbit - Jefferson Airplane

Psychedelic rock at its earliest. The 1960's drug revolution meets Alice in Wonderland (yeah, what was Lewis Carroll smoking?).

Remember "feed your head"?

Years later, Grace Slick would (probably off-handedly) tell a reporter that this today means "go home and read a book."