Music Analysis on Drug Use

Music Analysis The social problem that I am examining in music is drugs, which are a fairly frequent topic in many types of music, but they can be both glorified and vilified. This is an interesting subject specifically because of this dichotomy. Some subjects are treated in a fairly uniform manner -- there are probably a few pro-war songs, but not many. Popular music has an interesting time with drugs, however, because they captivate people.

Whether it is the mind-altering nature, the illegal nature or other aspects, it is an a subject that divides people, and this is even reflected in music. Further, there are different drugs, and the opinions regarding different drugs tend to be reflected as well -- so you might have songs celebrating one type of drug but warning about another. I have chosen five songs about drugs.

The subject has been in song for a very long time, and so I thought I would focus more on hip hop songs from since 2000, rather than going over the entire span of music about drugs. Taken together, the five songs provide a fairly good overview about drugs and society.

If a theme can be described, it is that young people experiment with drugs, especially when trying to alter their mood or enhance their lives, but that there are dangers associated with drugs and it is best not to get carried away with drug use. In particular, it can devolve quickly from having a good time to something more sinister. At the one end you have the party anthem "Molly," which is the sort of pure form drug glorification that is common in popular music.

There is no downside presented, the song is simply a drug song for people who are fans of the drug in question. There are a lot of other songs like this, especially about MDMA and marijuana. But with other drugs, the songs tend to be more cautionary. Songs like "Painkiller" and "Druggie Fresh" are quite a bit darker in nature. Even the music comes across very dark, let alone the lyrical content.

These songs speak to why people are getting into drugs, for example "Fresh, wet, cause reality sucks" from Druggie Fresh or "whether behind bars or in front of scars, we use medicine to numb the rap bar." So drugs are presented as a means of escaping from something.

This is pretty much the case with the party song, though they do not necessarily present it that way -- MDMA is used to take one to a different place while partying, and completely get into a happier mental state while at the club. The downside of all this is explored as well. Doobie Ashtray is sort of a song about when the party's over, and when all the drugs are gone, so are all the people and the good times. Then, nothing is left but a cold, hard reality.

Die like a rockstar is even more blunt, recounting a long list of celebrities who died from drug overdoses, and basically asking the audience why on earth they would want to go down this road? Is it really that glamorous? Interestingly, there were fewer songs that purely glamorized drug use than I expected when I began the search -- Molly is obviously one and there are some others about MDMA but in general not as many as expected.

Party songs, interestingly, tend to be more commercially successful, but the more cautionary songs are more common thematically. The link between music and drugs, and the multifaceted relationship between the two as expression of youth culture, has been studied by scholars. A study of the 279 most popular songs of 2005 showed that 93 of them, or one-third, contained drug references, averaging 35.2 substance abuse references per hour (Primack et al., 2008). The drug use was linked to a number of other subjects: partying, sex, violence and humor.

The authors of this study found that only 4% of references were explicitly anti-drug, which supports what was found in the above five songs, that the popular ones are more pro-drug, party-oriented songs while the ones that are anti-drug are more underground, though it could also be argued that some anti-drug songs are not explicitly so.

While Die like a Rockstar is, Druggie Fresh isn't as explicitly anti-drug other than the opening line and general atmosphere of darkness -- also taken in context of being from a very dark album about PCP addiction. Another study investigated the lifestyle links between music and drugs. This article was about MDMA and the dance music scene, but it could as easily have been about LSD in the 60s or marijuana in classic reggae.

The authors noted that the drugs and the music were inextricably linked, noting that drug use in this particular scene is considered to be the norm (Winstock, Griffiths and Stewart, 2001). The song Molly was a big hit, and definitely expressed that MDMA use in the club scene is normalized, that not only is there no stigma to drug use, but that it is something to be bragged about. It can be concluded from this that drugs in song tend to reflect popular culture, especially when the songs themselves are popular.

Pro-drug songs, particularly party anthems, tend to attract an audience of enthusiasts, serving as validation for that particular lifestyle choice. When the drugs are going good for someone, they are part of a group of people who are partying together, and everybody is happy on drugs. As shown in Doobie Ashtray, Druggie Fresh and other songs, however, when drugs start to go bad for someone, there is no collective. The upside of drugs is often social and collective, but the downside is much more individual, even anti-social.

So songs about the darker side of drugs are more plentiful in the underground, but they are less popular -- there is no.