From Tom Waits to Ma Rainey: The five best songs ever written about hangovers
Art has avoided the hangover. It’s one of its last great taboos. Millions of hours are squandered every day, all around the world, in the deathly grips of last night’s lingering farewell, but few songs, films, books or anything in between have ever dared to confront the daunting beast. There is no knowing why, but nothing in human history has ever occurred as frequently and universally, and been written about less. Only a few truth-sayers have dared to deal with sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll’s dirty morning after.
Not all hangovers are created equal, either, so there is plenty of scope for the willing artist. In your youth, they’re a visceral beast—all puking and pounding, until poof, they’re gone and your back on it, carelessly forgetting that they even exist. However, as the years advance, it becomes clear that the dog that bears its teeth is not always the deadliest. As your 20s drift towards the rearview, a more dogged and dilapidating hangover rises to the fore. What was once a mere morning jump scare is now a ghost that haunts your head for days, callously casting a crusade of doubt towards next weekend’s sordid plans.
Cormac McCarthy put it damningly: “His head was pounding and his vision skewed in some way and he was vaguely amazed at being alive and not sure that it was worth it.” And yet, there is a sense of hope to these harrows when they wane and normality beautifully returns, as Malcolm Lowry put it: “How, unless you drink as I do, could you hope to understand the beauty of an old Indian woman playing dominoes with a chicken?” The world has been skewed and revealed itself anew to the healing, hungover sinner, and that’s something fit for a song, too.
Thankfully, a few tracks have actually tackled the topic. We’ve curated these rare gems below. The artists in question surely know more than a thing or two about splattering hours of life onto porcelain, and they’ve got these caring gems to show for it—lovingly presented to the drunken world to let others know that they’re not alone. These songs are ladders cast into a dark hole; they’re ballads for a broken mind.
Five best songs about hangovers:
‘Tom Traubert’s Blues (Four Sheets To The Wind In Copenhagen)’ – Tom Waits
“Wasted and wounded, it ain’t what the moon did; I’ve got what I paid for now,” Tom Waits begins, with one of the finest opening folk lines ever written. You can smell the stout on his breath as he sings it, too. Together, the weary prose and plodding, poetic nature of the melody and performance make for one of the greatest examinations of alcohol and its impacts ever put to tape.
There is a lived-in sentiment, although vague and poeticised, we all know a Traubert and the blues that ail him. However, Waits does wallow in these ailing ales, while he doesn’t shirk away from them either, there is an undoubted beauty to this masterpiece that asserts the truth that Traubert is living a life. On a sore head, this sweet waltz offers serene comfort and vivid stimulation.
‘The Night Before’ – Lee Hazlewood
“If I could turn back the clock,” Lee Hazlewood sings like a man looking around what was his living room before a tornado blew through town, “Turn it back to yesterday / There are things I wouldn’t do / And things I wouldn’t say.” Throughout the tale that follows, the great songwriter deals with the fact that it’s not just the poison your body has to deal with on a hangover; you reap what you sow in myriad ways.
They say a drunk mind speaks sober thoughts; well, that’s true to the tenth percentile because it also spews a lot of spurious nonsense, so whoever made up this sorry rumour has a lot to answer for. Hazlewood knew that too, so while his song remains uncompromising, it’s one of gentle mercies too. With floating strings and his gentlemanly croon, he brings a cool drama to a drab comedown.
‘Booze and Blues’ – Ma Rainey
A brutal hangover can kick off chronic symptoms of self-pity, but blues legend Ma Rainey instead seeks to run her hangover out of town. She’s beyond pity and finds herself in a blistering rage that booze would be so bold as to worsen her wealth of blues. “Went to bed last night, and folks, I was in my dream,” she sings hopefully before the spirits sneakily shift the floor out from under her.
Dating back to 1924, there is a strange sort of comfort to be drawn from the fact that the hangover is as old as humanity, and a billion sorry heads have swum through the swamp you find yourself in. However, few have ever done it in the swaggering style of Rainey, who sings Jay Guy Suddoth’s song like someone with a bone to pick with bloody booze and its awful trick.
‘Horseleg Swastikas’ – Silver Jews
From seeing horrific symbology emerge in the wallpaper to fearing future appointments, David Berman finds himself on “the wrong side of Saturday night” as he faithfully mimics a droning hangover even with the maudlin music that the Silver Jews match his lyrics with. Alas, he knows his crowd are not worthy of further suffering and spares them the rod of rotten dissonance, creating a track that might be weary, but it just wants to agreeably get through to evening with you.
As one of, if not the greatest songwriter of this generation, Berman always remained determined to transfigure his circumstances into art of the highest order, imbued with humour and wry wisdom. He did this with such brilliance that you were almost glad life goes awry sometimes because that’s often where the best stories lie waiting. This track might be anti-epic in many ways, but few tracks have ever nailed the feeling that spawned them with such unerring fidelity.
‘Sunday Morning Coming Down’ – Johnny Cash
Every lyric sounds like a cliche, not because they are, but because you’ve lived it before. “I found my cleanest dirty shirt” is a line that belongs in the slacker Louvre, or however you spell it. Written by Kris Kristofferson, the protagonist might just be one of the most relatable characters in history as he simply goes about attempting to ease his heavy head.
While Cash’s rough vocals bring a brilliant performative earthiness to the track – few artists can rival him when it comes to storytelling singing – the advice he imparts is perhaps not the best. Hair of the dog may work in an emergency, but it’s a bad habit. The best way to avoid a hangover is to deny you have one—rise as normal, tear open the curtains, blitz out for fresh air like a kid seeing snowfall, and ravage a soda. If all that fails, then perhaps spin Cash and reconcile that at least he was able to make a masterpiece out of the shitshow you find yourself starring in.
