The 411 Music Top Five 03.16.10: Top 5 Songs For St. Patty's Day

Posted by Ben Czajkowski on 03.16.2010

From Lady Gaga's Bad Romance, Morrissey's Irish Blood, English Heart and Oasis' Cigarettes and Alcohol to Metallica's Whiskey In The Jar, Jimmy Buffet's Margaritaville, and AC/DC's Have a Drink on Me, it's time to get your drink on as the 411Music staff lists off their favorite songs that go along with St. Patrick's Day.

Mac Scarle

This one is hard for me, for several reasons.  Firstly, I don't like bands like Floggy Molly or Dropkick Murphys, which eliminates a pretty massive number of possible entries.  Also, I'm not a big St. Pat's guy.  The only side of my heritage I've ever been made in tune with was my English side, so it was just never a thing.  That being said, I'll try to make this relevant - but at least a few of these will just be "songs I get blind drunk to the most," because that's what this holiday is about in the States, isn't it?Honorable Mention: 

Naked Raygun - Wonder Beer: It's got everything I want in a drinking song: an awesome sing-along chorus, "whoa" parts, and it's all about beer.  Chicago punk rock pretty much at its finest, really. 5. Morrissey - Irish Blood, English Heart. This is a great pop song - it's got a killer hook, it's short, it's easy to sing along to, especially that awesome chorus - but it's a pop song with a heart.  Not the overdone "heart" of bands like U2 (you'll notice their absence from this list, despite my being a fan of their early work), but a more honest, down-to-earth sort of vibe.  It's a song about heritage, it's a song about controversy, and race, and it totally works.  It's all about a man who is definitely English making an attempt to reconcile that with his Irish heritage.  This is my second favorite track off You Are The Quarry, partly because the instrumentation is so phenomenal, but also because of the lyrical content. 4. Alkaline Trio - Jaked on Green Beers. One of my favorite Trio songs, one of my favorite breakup songs, and hey - it's even vaguely related to the topic thanks to its title!  I like this one so much because the instrumentation actually holds up to the bitter/pissed-off lyrical content.  It's a hard song by Trio standards, and rather than be a depressive, end-of-the-bar drinking song, it's a raucous, "yeah you know what? Fuck you too!" kind of drinking song.  If I'm at a bar with this on the jukebox, it gets put on.  Especially when I'm drinking (against my will, I should note) green beers, as I was this weekend.  Speaking of which - they lie when they say food coloring is tasteless.  I think that's the only possible way to make Miller Lite taste worse. 3. The Business - Guinness Boys. When I saw The Business at Riot Fest in Chicago a few years back, Micky Fitz dedicated this song to "all the plastic Irish in the room."  Clearly this is a man that knows his audience.  The Business are probably my favorite Oi band, and this song is just hilarious and awesome, a total terrace-style anthem (Chicago Fire fans sing a song with the same rhythm) dedicated to probably the most well-known Irish beer of all time.  Breaking from the list I said I'd be making, I've never actually drank heavily while listening to this song, but that's probably something I should work on. 2. The Pogues - Dirty Old Town. Yeah, sure, it's about Salford, not Ireland.  But it doesn't get much more Irish than a Pogues song that's a cover of a Dubliners track.  I absolutely love this song, with its brutally honest depiction of old Northern England (or, if you live in certain cities...current Northern England).  It's a sad song, but there's still a sort of reverence or affection towards the town being sung about.  Every version of this is great - from the Dubliners through Ted Leo and Black Rebel Motorcycle Club - but I picked this one because it's the most famous and I love Shane MacGowan's voice.  I wish I was from somewhere uglier like Detroit or Youngstown (here come the flames, I know) instead of Chicago so I could feasibly have this song played at my funeral. 1. Oasis - Cigarettes and Alcohol. Here we go.  Now THIS is a drinking song.  In fact, I always make sure to bring a couple bucks cash to every bar I go to so I can be sure that it gets played on the jukebox while I'm there.  Plus, thanks to the Gallagher brother's lineage and Noel being a Celtic fan, it even works for the theme...sort of.  This song has been my own personal anthem for the last few years, and for whatever reason, the fact that the main riff is so brazenly lifted from "Bang A Gong" makes it even better.  Oh, and as I find the need to point out to basically everyone I ever talk to, Oasis is still the greatest band of the last 25 years.

David Hayter

Okay so the idea of drinking songs is a bit alien to me, I tend to get plastered in a pub, have a laugh with my mates, and then head out somewhere and dance (terribly) to music. So I'm picking the tracks I most enjoy when I'm drunk. Only my number one is a song I can remember drinking to consistently, so expect some boozy choruses.

Honorable Mentions:

The Kids Aren't Alright (The Offspring), Hustlin' (Rick Ross), All Ludacris Singles, Party Hard & We Want Fun (Andrew WK), This Charming Man (The Smiths), Last Night (The Strokes) and Cocaine Blues (Johnny Cash).

5. I'm Shipping Up To Boston (Dropkick Murphy's).

Okay so I find Celtic-rock-punk one of the most uninteresting and uncreative genres in all of existence, but it's hard to deny that his is one hell of track and a hell of a good time when your completely shawshanked. Plus any track that allows you create a pit in a pop club is good right!...right?...eh.

 

4. Bad Romance (Lady Gaga).

Okay an odd choice, I think Lady Gaga is beyond awesome, but even if you hate her, when you completely caplangoed her songs are just mad fun. There's nothing like being thoroughly trolleyed and shouting/screeching "Lurrrvvv Laarrrrvvvv Luvvvvv" in your best Gaga voice. Don't act like you haven't....I know you have...and you know it to...and more importantly you loved it...even if you can't admit it to yourself, just yet.

 

3. Sheila (Jamie T).

Just a great track for the thoroughly gatted, a track full of blood, booze and tragedy, but most importantly it's full of shouty parts and has a big wide eyed chanting chorus. Oh and of course some white boy Saaaaaarth London rapping which is just divine when you pissed.

 

2. Fat Lip (Sum 41).

Ah Sum 41, yes they are horrid, but they give me that warm nostalgic feeling for my youth, and when this drops on a night out (which is a real rarity) it's a brilliant excuse to act like a wally. And by the time your thoroughly wankered you'll actually be convinced it's a good track (hard to believe I know).

 

1. Whiskey In The Jar (Thin Lizzy, Metallica, The Dubliners & A million Others).

I like the Thin Lizzy version best, I enjoy the Metallica version the most on a night out, and well the Dubliners version reminds me of some old Irish family roots that I don't really care about. Either way, it's a beautiful ancient folk song (in the traditional sense of the word) that is so gorgeous and infectious. So much so that it'll probably survive for another two hundred years. Lyrics about banditry and duelling + a killer riff = awesome when utterly Banjoed and partially Kazooied.

 

Dan Haggerty

5.  The Doors - "The Alabama Song".

Crazy memories this one, a friend's wedding many years ago, all of us smashed to the hilt gathered on the dance floor while the best man commandeered the DJ and popped this in.  All of us out of tune singing this traditional classic piece of Americana done tipsy and stumbling even before our inebriated brains got a hold of it.  And really, for a traditional folk like shot of moonshine, it's damn catchy.  Show us the way to the next whisky bar indeed. 

 

4. Jimmy Buffet  - "Margaritaville".

Oh come on, it's the only party tune that it's OK to bust out in the day time.   The man's signature tune, and if you don't believe me you haven't seen this song's namesake splattered at merchandising stores in key drinking tourist getaways.  This combines a uniquely Caribbean cool whimsy that just begs for clam bakes and beaches to run shoeless on.  Most drinking songs make you think party while this one serenades you into thinking a lazy day with a cocktail is the most natural thing in the world.  What more could you want for a vision of an ideal day? 

 

3. George Thorogood & the Destroyers  - "One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer".

Sure, Thorogood had a number of great drinking songs, but this refurbished take on John Lee Hooker's "House Rent Blues" is a mini epic of a bad day at life in general.  But we don't care because we'll just cozy up to the bar and take a shot of bourbon, scotch, and chase it with a beer.  That blues thump and rhythm combined with the hard rock guitar buzz is what makes this song.  Definitely one of the greater combinations of both worlds in sound and spirit, 

 

2. KISS - "Cold Gin".

Color me crazy, but as much grief as I give this band there is a handful of albums I think are good (it's just the bad ones real blow the average), and it's songs like "Cold Gin" that I think of when I consider the band at their idealized best of party and rock.  A colorful combination of alcohol and the art of nailing that girl sharing the evening with you at the bar, this Ace Frehley song is the right cocktail of licks, chicks, and the important point where the two shall meet.   Forget the pomp and circumstance of latter KISS sellouts.  Pony up to the bar for the band earliest material that manages to crawl out of the barwith you. 

 

1. AC/DC - "Have a Drink on Me".

The ultimate drinking song from the ultimate drinking band.  Yea and verily, AC/DC were the soundtrack to any summer night pushing back a few brown bottle at the bonfire, the group alone likely more responsible for killing the brain cells of a generation than any other force at the time, the one band that anyone and everyone could and would agree to at those wild parties.   And then they went and immortalized the very concept with a song that pays to tribute to their mission statement – Have fun.  Oh we did.  A lot of people did.  And they did it with this song playing in the background.    

 

The Final Word

As always, the last thoughts come from you, the reader. We're merely unpaid monkeys with typewriters and Wikipedia. Here's what you need to do: List your Top Five for this week's topic on the comment section using the following format: 5. Artist - "Song": Why you picked it. 4. Artist - "Song": Why you picked it. 3. Artist - "Song": Why you picked it. 2. Artist - "Song": Why you picked it. 1. Artist - "Song": Why you picked it.