Loneliness, isolation, grief, dead-end job prospects, they’re all classic fodder for songs built on binge drinking. But the most harrowing songs are those that frame alcoholism as a disease. On the 1953 Webb Pierce classic There Stands the Glass, the singer stares down an empty bourbon glass, “that will hide all my fears/that will drown all my tears”. The drink will be the first one he takes that day, and he is resigned to knowing resistance is futile: “Brother, I’m on my way,” he sings. The Mary Gauthier song I Drink from 1999, later covered by Bobby Bare, is the best example of this fatalism. In it, an alcoholic reveals that addiction is what defines them to the core, so fixing it is pointless. “I know what I am/But I don’t give a damn,” she sings.
‘A taste of home’
Shaboozey’s protagonist is not so despondent. His barfly is a more familiar one in modern country. In fact, in recent years, country music has continued to elevate drinking songs more than ever before, but has done so in a way in which the consequences of inebriation are largely ignored. In songs like Beer Thirty by Brooks & Dunn (1999), Tequila Makes Her Clothes Fall Off by Joe Nichols (2005), Red Solo Cup by Toby Keith (2011), Drink in My Hand by Eric Church (2011), Drunk on a Plane by Dierks Bentley (2014), Day Drinking by Little Big Town (2014), Pour Me a Drink by Post Malone (2024), and countless others, alcohol is presented, not as the thing that isolates the song’s protagonist from his or her family and friends, but as the one thing that brings them together to have fun.
The shift corresponds with the intimate relationships alcohol brands have forged with the industry. Stars like Kenny Chesney, Blake Shelton, Alan Jackson, Eric Church, Luke Bryan, Miranda Lambert, Toby Keith and others signed deals to create their own brands of beer, rum, vodka, wine, mezcal – think of a type of alcohol and it’s likely that a country hitmaker has their name on a bottle. Shelton, Church, Jackson, Bryan, and Lambert, and others like Dierks Bentley, John Rich, Florida Georgia Line, and Jason Aldean, have also all opened their own signature bars in downtown Nashville. And following a trend already established in hip-hop, some endorsement terms go as far as name-dropping the brand in a song lyric or featuring the product prominently in an accompanying video. With so much at stake, it’s now less likely than ever that the latest chart-topping drinking song is going to present inebriation’s dark side.
