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This is not a “10 Best Songs About Drinking” list, and it is not even a “10 Essential Songs About Drinking” list. These are simply ten of our favorite songs about drinking, including several tracks that are not always associated with alcohol unless you really know the lyrics. We deliberately stayed away from many of the usual choices such as “Whiskey in the Jar,” “One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer,” and “I Drink Alone” because those songs already dominate so many drinking-song lists.
Instead, we wanted to dig a little deeper and choose songs where drinking becomes part of a larger story about fear, failure, humor, loneliness, nostalgia, celebration, or mortality. Some are unmistakable drinking songs from the title alone, while others hide the connection inside the narrative. That mix is what makes this list more interesting to us.
# 10 – My Wife – The Who
“My Wife” by The Who turns a drinking story into a full-blown comic crisis. Written and sung by bassist John Entwistle, the song appeared on Who’s Next in 1971 and gave Entwistle one of his best-known spotlight moments with the band. The narrator has been out drinking, landed in trouble, and becomes convinced that his furious wife is going to kill him when he gets home. Entwistle’s bass, piano, and brass parts add to the frantic humor while Pete Townshend and Keith Moon push the track forward with enormous energy. It is a perfect drinking song because the alcohol is only the beginning of the problem, with the real joke coming from the wildly exaggerated consequences that follow.
Read More: The Who’s Best Song On Each Of Their Studio Albums
# 9 – Deacon Blues – Steely Dan
Steely Dan’s “Deacon Blues,” from the 1977 album Aja, turns drinking into part of a larger fantasy about choosing the life of an outsider. Written by Donald Fagen and Walter Becker, the song follows a narrator who romanticizes failure, jazz, late nights, and the freedom to live by his own rules. Scotch whisky becomes one of the details in that self-created identity, giving the song a strong connection to this list without making alcohol its only subject. Contrary to the older version of this article, “Deacon Blues” was released as a single in 1978 and reached No. 19 on the Billboard Hot 100. Its long, beautifully arranged performance remains one of Steely Dan’s defining combinations of jazz sophistication, dark humor, and emotional ambiguity.
Read More: Steely Dan’s Best Song On Each Of Their Studio Albums
# 8 – Kiss Me, I’m #!@’faced – Dropkick Murphys
Dropkick Murphys’ “Kiss Me, I’m #!@’faced” is the least subtle drinking song on this list, and that is exactly why it belongs here. Released on the band’s 2003 album Blackout, the song builds around a narrator whose drunken confidence grows more ridiculous with every boast. By the time he finally admits that much of his swagger is nonsense, the joke has turned into a surprisingly honest piece of self-deprecation. The band’s Celtic punk attack gives the song the feel of a crowded late-night singalong, complete with guitars, accordion, bagpipes, and a chorus built for an audience. It is crude, funny, and completely aware of how foolish people can sound after too many drinks.
Read More: Top 10 Dropkick Murphys Songs
# 7 – Cracklin’ Rosie – Neil Diamond
Neil Diamond’s “Cracklin’ Rosie” sounds like a love song until you learn that Rosie is really a bottle of inexpensive wine. Diamond later explained that the idea came from a story he heard during an interview in Canada about men on a reservation buying a cheap wine called Crackling Rose when there were not enough women in the community. He transformed that story into an upbeat song in which the wine is treated almost like a romantic companion. Released in 1970 on Tap Root Manuscript, “Cracklin’ Rosie” became Diamond’s first No. 1 single on the Billboard Hot 100. The song earns its place here because the drinking reference is hiding in plain sight inside one of the happiest-sounding records of his career.
Read More: 10 Most Rocking Neil Diamond Songs
# 6 – Rudy Wants To Buy Yez A Drink – Frank Zappa
Frank Zappa’s “Rudy Wants to Buy Yez a Drink,” from the 1970 album Chunga’s Revenge, uses the promise of a drink as the setup for one of Zappa’s characteristic pieces of satire. Rudy is not simply a generous barroom character but a musicians’ union representative checking whether the band members have paid their union dues. Former Mothers drummer Jimmy Carl Black later recalled that the inspiration came from an encounter with a local musicians’ union representative named Rudy in Milwaukee. Zappa turns the situation into a short, absurd rock song filled with exaggerated friendliness, suspicion, and jokes about authority. The drink in the title becomes part of the character’s sales pitch, which makes the song a wonderfully strange addition to a drinking list.
Read More: Top 10 Frank Zappa Love Songs
# 5 – Willin’ – Linda Ronstadt
Linda Ronstadt’s version of “Willin'” brings a gentler emotional tone to Lowell George’s classic portrait of a truck driver living on the road. She recorded the song for her 1974 breakthrough album Heart Like a Wheel, with Peter Asher producing. The narrator’s references to being drunk, dirty, and worn down connect alcohol to a much larger life of highways, loneliness, drugs, hard work, and endurance. Ronstadt’s vocal makes the character feel less like a caricature and more like someone accepting the cost of the life he has chosen. It is not simply a drinking song, but alcohol is woven so naturally into the road story that the song fits this list perfectly.
Read More: Top 10 Linda Ronstadt Songs That Leave You Breathless
# 4 – Mas Tequila – Sammy Hagar
Sammy Hagar’s “Mas Tequila” makes no attempt to hide what it is about. Released on the 1999 album Red Voodoo, the song turns Hagar’s Cabo San Lucas party culture and growing Cabo Wabo tequila business into a loud rock celebration. Its arrangement is based on Gary Glitter and Mike Leander’s “Rock and Roll Part 2,” which is why both men share songwriting credit with Hagar. The pounding beat, chant-like hook, horns, and Hagar’s rough vocal make the track sound like a bar party already in progress. Unlike several of the more complicated songs on this list, “Mas Tequila” is simply about letting loose and asking for another round.
Read More: Our 10 Favorite Sammy Hagar Videos
# 3 – Elderberry Wine – Elton John
Elton John’s “Elderberry Wine” is one of the liveliest songs on his 1973 album Don’t Shoot Me I’m Only the Piano Player. Written by Elton John and Bernie Taupin and produced by Gus Dudgeon, the song had already appeared as the B-side of “Crocodile Rock” before the album was released. The narrator looks back on a former relationship through memories of homemade elderberry wine, drinking, and the comfort of a life that is now gone. Elton’s rolling piano and the bright brass arrangement give the track an exuberant sound even though the lyric is rooted in loneliness and nostalgia. That contrast between the happy music and the narrator’s alcohol-soaked memories is what makes “Elderberry Wine” such an interesting drinking song.
Read More: Top 10 Elton John Non-Album Singles
# 2 – One For My Baby – Frank Sinatra
Frank Sinatra’s “One for My Baby (And One More for the Road)” may be the ultimate late-night barroom song. Harold Arlen and Johnny Mercer wrote it for the 1943 film The Sky’s the Limit, where Fred Astaire introduced it, and Sinatra first recorded the song in 1947. His defining version came in 1958 on Frank Sinatra Sings for Only the Lonely, arranged by Nelson Riddle and built around the intimate piano playing of Bill Miller. The narrator sits almost alone in a bar, talking through a failed relationship while ordering one final drink before leaving. Sinatra turns that simple scene into something painfully human, which is why the song remains one of the greatest examples of drinking used as a setting for loneliness rather than celebration.
Read More: Top 10 Frank Sinatra Songs
# 1 – Picasso’s Last Words (Drink to Me) – Paul McCartney & Wings
“Picasso’s Last Words (Drink to Me)” is one of the strangest and most imaginative songs on Paul McCartney and Wings’ 1973 album Band on the Run. McCartney has explained that Dustin Hoffman showed him a newspaper item about Pablo Picasso’s reported final words and challenged him to turn the story into a song, which McCartney did. The finished track uses the idea of raising a drink to someone who has died as both a toast and a reflection on mortality, while musical fragments from elsewhere on the album drift through the arrangement. Denny Seiwell did not play on the recording because he left Wings before the Lagos sessions; Paul handled the drums, while Denny Laine contributed guitars and vocals and Ginger Baker added percussion during the session at his ARC Studio in Nigeria. The result turns drinking into something ceremonial and reflective, making it an unconventional but fitting choice for the final spot on our list.
Read More: 10 Most Underrated Paul McCartney & Wings Songs
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Updated September 20, 2026.
10 Of Our Favorite Songs About Drinking article published on ClassicRockHistory.com © 2026
Here are a few more cuts that CRH readers should seek out, which address the subject of drowning one’s sorrows, whether it be personal disappointments, rebuke of a cheating lover, or losing a mate whom you thought was your life partner:
“You’re Not Drinking Enough” – Don Henley from the “Building The Perfect Beast” album, released in 1984, addressing comforting one’s self from lost love.
“Cheap Tequila” either the country-rock version from Rick Derringer’s 1973 (timeless, IMO) “All American Boy” album, or Johnny Winter’s slow-burn blues version from his 1973 album “Still Alive And Well”.
“Serves You Right To Suffer” the steamy/sweaty version of the John Lee Hooker classic, from the J. Geils Band’s 1972 superb rock/blues-rock “Live – Full House” album.
e.g.: “Poppin’ pills by morning, drinking booze at night
Three days later baby, you’re such an ugly sight