What Do You Mean It Wasn't Made on Drugs?/Music

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • The Lonely Island has a song called "Great Day" that is an average day...from the PoV of a cocaine addict. It may have well been written on drugs, too.
  • One word: "Prisencolinensinainciusol". The "lyrics" are incoherent jibberish made to sound like American English. Definitely qualifies as an Ear Worm and Weird Italian Thing as well. Ol Raight!
  • Liam Lynch's "Happy Song." Seriously. Here are the lyrics. Tell me it is not about a drug trip and/or being high.
  • The Ben Bernanke music video by Lemon Demon, as well as the song.
  • Queen. With the exception of Freddie Mercury in the 70s, and his cigarette smoking, the band's songs were not written under the influence of anything stronger than tea and alcohol. Brian May, the guitarist, actually goes so far as to ban smoking from his most recent concerts and any building he owns.
  • The Beatles claim that "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" was inspired by a picture John Lennon's son drew about a girl named Lucy, not the drug "LSD". Currently, the most accepted explanation is that although parts of the song are probably drug-inspired, it's equally inspired by the drawing, and the title's "LSD" acronym is a complete coincidence.
    • The rumor was probably helped by the sequence for that song in Yellow Submarine.
    • Ironically, one of their few songs they admitted was about drugs was the innocuous-sounding "Got to Get You Into My Life".
      • (The others: George Harrison said that "I Me Mine" is not just about selfishness is general but also about how selfish people get when they're on acid, and John Lennon said that "Dr. Robert" was about a real man who was a doctor in both senses of the expression.)
    • And ONLY the first two lines of I Am The Walrus were written on acid, according to Lennon. Not 100%, but a rather insignificant portion of the actual song. (And if anything, those lines prove the explanation in this trope right; something repetitive like "I am he as you are he as you are me" is as far as you are going to get if writing lyrics while on acid.) The weirdness in the rest of the song was intentional. John Lennon wanted it to sound druggy and incomprehensible; it was his way of messing with people who were looking for "deeper meanings" in Beatles songs. As he said, "Let them figure that one out!"
      • Parts that seem to be drug-inspired could have been written in the style of The Goon Show, but not all.
  • Mary Jane's Last Dance.
    • While marijuana is involved in the song, the music video is about Petty as a morgue assistant who takes home the corpse of a woman (played by Kim Basinger) for a dinner date. Necrophiliac sex with her is the "last dance". Talk about MTV trying to pretend it's about something else...
    • Heartbreaker guitarist Mike Campbell said, "My take on it is it can be whatever you want it to be. A lot of people think it's a drug reference, and if that's what you want to think, it very well could be, but it could also just be a goodbye love song."
  • Some of of Montreal's recent albums, especially Skeletal Lamping, sound like Quaaludes set to music, and certainly make references to (other people using and pushing) drugs. But lead singer Kevin Barnes has repeatedly denied drug use—he's just utterly lost his mind. Even "Heimdalsgate Like a Promethian Curse" (Chemicals) from Hissing Fauna is, according to Word of God, about serotonin.
  • Puff The Magic Dragon got some heat from the Moral Guardians about praising drug use, something the band that made it denied quite vehemently. Since the other music of Peter, Paul, and Mary is so strait-laced, this is apparently just an accident.
    • It was never intended that way, but the song is sometimes re-interpreted as a metaphor for drug addiction, with the little boy's growing up and leaving behind his toy dragon / imaginary friend representing giving up drug abuse and taking responsibility for one's own life.
  • The video for The King of Wishful Thinking is a... loose interpretation of the innocuous song. It's as if a very, very dull man has utterly lost his mind. Oh, and bad white man dancing throughout.
  • "The Most Unwanted Song" wasn't made on drugs. It was carefully made to incorporate the most annoying Music Tropes ever, according to the people surveyed. It's mind-bogglingly, almost endearingly bizarre. Especially when they get to the country/opera/rap bit. And the children shouting with joy over every holiday in the calendar year, and the prospect of doing the appropriate shopping at Wal-Mart. If you don't go "WTF" at least once, you are an alien. Oh, and have we mentioned it's longer than Inna Gadda Davida? Enjoy.
  • Red Hot Chili Peppers. Particularly "Behind the Sun." And considering that between them they've probably done enough illicit substances to kill a herd of buffalo, it really is hard to believe it wasn't made on drugs.
    • The band has said in interviews that "Under The Bridge" is explicitly about heroin usage. The giveaway line is "...drew some blood", which refers to blood flowing up into the heroin syringe before the drugs are injected into the vein.
    • Their video for "Otherside", which, perhaps not coincidentally, is a big homage to The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.
  • Try reading a songmeanings.net page on any song (especially by an artist associated with stoners like Pink Floyd or Modest Mouse) without getting a comment like "wooah man i want some of the drugss that tihs gut wuz on lol" or insisting that the song is actually about drugs.
  • Almost anything by Tori Amos. Particularly the albums From the Choirgirl Hotel, Boys for Pele, and To Venus and Back. ESPECIALLY To Venus and Back.
    • Well, "Father Lucifer" was written after Tori met Satan on a drug trip with a South American shaman. I think it's possible that drugs influence(d) Tori. Just listen to "Datura". It sounds like a trip on... well, datura.
  • Unexpect. I almost hope these guys are on drugs, because the idea of a sober and otherwise sane person coming up with a track like Megalomaniac Trees is... unsettling...
  • Ted Nugent is an adamant straight-edge, and aside from some brief experimentation in The Sixties, has never used drugs and, by his own confession, has had maybe three beers in his entire life. In this light, his entire musical catalog falls into this category.
  • Musical Youth's "Pass The Dutchie" was widely construed to be about marijuana, but it refers instead to a Jamaican cooking pot. It was, however, based on a song called "Pass The Kouchie", which did indeed refer to a cannabis pipe.
    • Most people still don't know (or care), and dutchie now has become slang for a joint.
  • Alice Cooper used to abuse alcohol heavily, then sobered up in the 80s. His pre-sobriety work is sometimes trippy, sometimes scary. His later work, particularly Along Came a Spider, often goes straight into horror.
  • Everything done by Genesis while headed by Peter Gabriel, especially The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway.
  • Trippy balladeer Donovan renounced drugs in 1966 after police raided his home... and went on to pen Atlantis and an album entitled A Gift from a Flower to a Garden.
    • In fact, the sleeve for A Gift From a Flower... contained a message calling on young people to renounce the use of drugs.
  • Before at least one live performance of his song "Special Olympics", Stephen Lynch told the audience that he was wasted when he wrote it.
  • Close to the Edge by Yes (all three tracks, not just the title track) hovers tantalizingly on the border of almost making sense, but not quite. Whether this indicates anything about the process of creation...
    • Actually, everything ever made by Yes, ever.
    • Steve Howe and Chris Squire have both commented in various interviews over the years that a lot of the seemingly trippy, surrealistic lyrics in Yes' "classic" period (i.e. the 1970s) came about not through drugs, as everyone assumes, but because Jon Anderson considered their voices as just another instrument. He would string nonsense lyrics together based on whatever words would fit the music and, as long as the words sounded good when they were sung, he didn't care if they made any sense or not. (This may also have been a case of Jon knowing his audience, many of whom probably were on drugs at the time.) To be fair, while the lyrics may not have been inspired by drug use, the band members have made no secret of their use of cannabis at the time, with the exception of Wakeman, who preferred alcohol.
  • Somewhat subverted by Rush. While they've made no secret of their heavy use of hallucinogenics in the 70s (Hemispheres...), they've apparently been straight since then, yet the only apparent change is their songs have gotten shorter. Listen to Grace Under Pressure sometime...
    • Really? Pretty sure they were clean back then too. Most of their stuff is not actually very trippy anyways. At best, one song is about smoking weed in the far east, and another is an adaptation of a poem written while on a drug trip. Indeed, while albums such as Hemispheres were rather straight forward, Grace Under Pressure contained some of the most unusual, metaphorical and trippy lyrics in their entire catalog.
    • Coleridge says he wrote Kubla Khan (the inspiration for Rush's Xanadu) after an opium dream. Why I clarify that it is Coleridge's account as despite his opium addiction, he often exaggerated or lied about his opium usage - similar to how a rapper might play up crimes they committed to create interest.
      • "A Passage to Bangkok" on 2112 is obviously about weed and hash.
      • Geddy Lee outright admitted in the 2010 Rush documentary "Beyond The Lighted Stage" that they were stoned when they wrote/recorded "Caress of Steel".
      • And in a spectacularly rare interview circa 2008 or so, Alex Lifeson admits that he still partakes in a bit of the old sweet leaf every now and then. Neil doesn't and nobody really knows if Geddy still does or not.
  • Anything by Miranda July. Not exactly music, but it doesn't really fit anywhere else, and she did release it as an album... If you do manage to find any of her albums, it'd probably be a good idea not to listen to the whole thing at once. And under no circumstances should you listen to her on hallucinogens.
  • Many people feel Jethro Tull, in particular writer/singer/flutist Ian Anderson, were on drugs given Ian's jumping around on stage and his crazy, wide-eyed expressions. However, Anderson rarely drinks, smokes little (or none at this point) tobacco, and does not do drugs at all. In fact, he once said that his few experimentation experience actually hindered his creativity.
  • The music video for Chris Dane Owens' "Shine on Me" would be an example even if Owens' eyes weren't bloodshot throughout the video.
  • As if the name itself wasn't strange enough, this just seriously makes you wonder what they're drinking over in whatever animation studio produced this.
  • Beyoncé's music video for "Video Phone". Featuring Lady Gaga. Yep, this definitely qualifies.
  • Come to mention her, Lady Gaga, period, especially The Fame Monster and Born This way and the video's for Bad Romance, Born This Way, You and I and Alejandro beg to differ. She has done cocaine in the past. She denies she does it now, but people have said she acts like she's on cocaine most of the time.
    • According to Wikipedia, "Just Dance" was written in ten minutes during a hangover. Does that count as under the influence of alcohol?
    • Discussed with Lady Gaga as she has simultaneously confirmed using drugs while creating and denied it as she saw fit.
  • Pink Floyd. Especially The Wall and its movie. Richard Wright was fired from the band during after recording The Wall because of a drug problem. just... out there. Waaaay out there. And the drug Wright was fired over was COCAINE—probably the OPPOSITE sort of drug Pink Floyd is associated with.
    • Your Mileage May Vary on the "Not to say it's bad" part.
    • Anything written by Syd Barrett in '67 likely averts this. The man lost his mind due to his acid use. According to Nick Mason's Echo's book, they didn't realize anything was really wrong with him (they knew he did LSD, but that was all) at first because he was still capable of creating new songs like a factory. Although he was still a great songwriter before and after his LSD phase.
  • This music video is quite possibly why Eddie Murphy pursued acting and not music after doing stand-up comedy.
  • Bonnie Tyler's videos for "Total Eclipse of the Heart" and to a lesser degree "Holding out for a Hero." The literal version of the former actually makes sense, in so far that what's happening is what is sung.
  • Hot Chip's video for I Feel Better has recently gone viral and deservedly so. Because just when you think it can't get weirder... it does.
  • Weird Al Yankovic. It's been said if he ever did use drugs, he'd probably turn normal.
  • The Music Video for "Take Your Mama" definitely qualifies.
  • It's worth noting that Captain Beefheart claimed that none of his music was made under the influence of drugs. However, his band members have refuted this.
  • Reportedly the only drug Mike Patton uses is caffeine, which can be surprising given the stranger moments of Faith No More and especially his work with Mr. Bungle and Fantomas. Yes, despite Faith No More having an album called Angel Dust (a few songs on that album were things he wrote during a sleep deprivation experiment though). Adult Themes For Voice, his bizarre a capella sound collage of a solo debut, was inspired by nothing more than fits of boredom during a lengthy Faith No More tour that he happened to pack his tape recorder for. And while he has written at least one song about drug use, it's intended as a satirical skewering of the party lifestyle rather than a recounting of any personal experience.
  • The two Zebrahead songs Song 10 and Livin' Libido Loco are definitely qualified for this.
  • The late Frank Zappa had a well known dislike of drugs, yet wrote songs such as "The Return of the Son of Monster Magnet" and "Billy the Mountain", which is about how you shouldn't try to persuade a mountain to fight in 'Nam, and gave his children names like Moon Unit, Dweezil, and Diva.
    • He'd fire band members for smoking half a joint, and then go record an album like Lumpy Gravy.
    • Zappa had done marijuana a handful of times in social situations to be polite, and enjoyed the occasional beer. His real drugs were coffee and cigarettes. And the rest of the band members were not strangers to drugs, despite Zappa's "no drugs on the road" policy. This policy was mostly so the cops would not have an excuse to bust him, and Zappa, perfectionist he is, wrote music that is very hard to play with any sort of quality if you're not sober!
      • Zappa wrote music that is very hard to play, period.
    • Sounds like he didn't need any drugs; he was just naturally that way. Frank Zappa On Drugs would be an accountant or insurance adjuster or something.
    • He wrote a rock opera that has a character based on L. Ron Hubbard (okay, not based, he just uses Hubbard's name) who heads a cult focused around sex with household appliances. Plus, the main character joins the cult and has sex with household appliances...that speak German.
    • In his book The Real Frank Zappa Book he relates the story of how as a child he would play with a large lump of mercury as a toy. So while his weirdness may not be drug induced it may be chemically so. In the same book he somewhat hypocritically refers to cigarattes and coffee as food rather than drugs.
      • Zappa wrote, "I like pepper, tobacco and coffee. That's my metabolism." So he means they're more like food than drugs for him. Not all of the book was intended to be taken literally.
      • It was definitely meant as a joke. He once said in an interview "Tobacco is my favorite vegetable."
  • The video for the Pet Shop Boys song "Go West". My first thought on watching it was "magic mushrooms". Really, it has to be seen to be believed. Some of the characters even look like mushrooms.
    • That's nothing compared to "Can You Forgive Her?". Go West's video does have thematic ties to its song. CYFH's video has absolutely nothing to do with the song, in addition to being weird.
  • Big & Rich came up with some pretty psychedelic Country Music (yes, you read that right) on their first album, Horse of a Different Color, including a track sounding an awful lot like it came off a Queen album. Most of their weirder music is courtesy of Big Kenny, whose two solo albums also fall under this trope (especially the first one, which is brightly-colored, theatrical synth-pop with mostly delirious lyrics); John Rich is far more sedate.
  • Some artists are just so weird that everything they do can invoke this trope, such as Beck, Bjork, Cocteau Twins, Modest Mouse, Imogen Heap, and Frou Frou.
  • Cher's Believe music video.
  • The Geeks Were Right by The Faint, a relatively unknown/underground indie...techno-y elec. band. Watch at your own sanity's risk.
  • The oeuvre of eurodance band Toy-Box has to be heard to be believed, but their music videos are especially deliciously cracked out.
  • Genesis before Peter Gabriel pursued a solo career. Strangely enough, he did not take hallucinogenic drugs.
  • Push Th' Little Daisies by Ween.
  • Born On A Horse by Biffy Clyro. So, um, what does it mean?
    • Actually, it really does seem to be about drugs. Maybe.
  • "Their Satanic Majesties Request" by The Rolling Stones. Mick Jagger has admitted that the band was on acid throughout the entire recording of the album. Keith Richards claims he has no memory of the sessions at all.
  • Subverted by Hawkwind, in that they were on drugs most of the time. Try listening to Douglas in the Jungle sometime and try to find an explanation that isn't drugs.
  • Aversion: David Bowie has said that he doesn't even remember recording 1976's Station to Station because he was so strung out on cocaine at the time (this was soon after the filming of The Man Who Fell to Earth, mentioned under Films: Live Action!). And "TVC15" is apparently about a hallucination Iggy Pop had about his then-girlfriend being swallowed by a TV-set.
  • Aphex Twin, Autechre, and other IDM.
  • The music video for Black Hole Sun by Soundgarden.
  • Cicada's "Psycho Thrill" might count. The song itself is quite cute and catchy, but take a good look at the music video and tell me it wasn't made by someone on an illegal mind-altering substance.
  • Dan Deacon in general gets this reaction, especially due to his colorful, hyperactively edited music videos, but one specific case was his spoken word track "Drinking Out Of Cups". Once Liam Lynch added animation to the piece and the video became memetic, rumors abounded that it was the recorded result of him either locking himself in a closet while on acid, or locking someone else who was on acid in a closet. Deacon sent out a myspace bulletin clarifying that he's never done acid, saying "to have it be stated that I was on acid time and time again takes away from any of the creative process I put into the piece". The Word Salad Humor actually resulted from Deacon changing channels on a muted television, reacting in character to whatever he saw (specifically, his character was meant to be a macho Long Islander stereotype), and recording the results.
  • The video for the song Un Monde Parfait, by French singer Ilona Mitrecey.
  • This now viral video, PONPONPON. Apparently the artist, Kyary Pamyu Pamyu, wants to indulge in this.
  • Sparklehorse's first 2 albums were, in fact, drug-inspired. Then, for his third album, Mark Linkous (allegedly) left them behind. The result?

and blood was rushing up the stairs
I shut my eyes and killed the cock
when the sun came knocking
oh to taste the salty oil
of your chest and on your eyes
when the sting is on the rise

  • Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails fame stated that he used to think drugs made him creative. He then gave drugs up and he went from a few years between each album to a creativity burst of realising a few in a year (some for free.)
  • Ke$ha, subverted in she's very honest about her drinking past in her music.
  • Everything Else wasn't on drugs when they made "What Can't Be Seen".
  • Just watch Linkin Park's music videos, especially for When I'm Gone and What I've Done. Even if they weren't inspired by an acid trip, they would be really weird to watch while on drugs...
  • Skinny Puppy's music is an aversion; most of their music was written and created while on drugs, and a copious amount thereof.
  • Led Zeppelin is also a definite aversion. If my memory serves correctly, Page has even implied that he barely even remembers recording Presence because he was so strung out on heroin at the time (and that's an album where there are hundreds of tracks on some songs). Then again the fact that he stayed up several days straight apparently without sleeping probably contributed somewhat too. The whole album was recorded and mixed in a total of eighteen days.
  • The music video for "Ladies And Gentlemen: My Brother, The Failure" by Thursday is fairly straightforward at first, if not strange because, unlike the lyrics, the video doesn't seem to have anything to do with brothers. It goes to hell around the time the main character's wedding dress-wearing wife starts ballroom dancing with giant cockroaches, who then get into a fist fight with an exterminator.
  • Incubus have stopped using drugs after Enjoy Incubus.
  • Just try to watch "Eagle" by ABBA and try to keep in mind that the writers, primary Bjorn and Benny, were often sober since they have to focus. Lasse Hallström, who directed the video along with the movie, was known for his artistic skills. Just to get the idea, watch the other music videos and try to compare them.
  • Elton John had a history of fighting drug addiction. Nowadays his outfits and certain lyrics are the only part of him that trips balls.
  • Ozzy Osbourne, in his own words "for the last God-knows how many years, I've been a major practicing drug addict and alcoholic", now claims to be completely drug-free, having even stopped taking a powerful anti-seizure medication that he says was largely responsible for his speech impediment. He says all he's on now is "lots of coffee" and that if they ever make coffee illegal, "I'm fucked."
    • He said that his 2007 album Black Rain was the first one he's ever recorded while sober.
    • It's Ozzy. He probably doesn't need them anymore.
    • He is currently studied by scientists who want to find out how some people manage to shrug off the effects of ungodly amounts of drugs, while others succumb after a few tries. They actually discovered several genes in his genome that allow his body to metabolize alcohol and opiates better than the average person.
  • They Might Be Giants are often mistaken for drug addicts because of the surreal nature of their songs. They drink a metric shitload of coffee, but that's it.
  • When asked if he had ever smoked marijuana, Tom Lehrer cheekily replied: "I have never done an illegal substance in my life... and I have never told a lie."
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