Even soft drugs get a bad rap
By Alan Travis and Sally James Gregory
October 29, 2003
Young musicians today are more likely than those of previous generations to decry drugs for the harm they can cause, according to research in the United States.
The study, based on an analysis of drug lyrics in English-language popular music since the 1960s, has been highlighted as one of the few pieces of good news in the annual survey by the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction, the European Union's drugs agency.
The research, published by the University of Texas in Austin, explodes the conventional wisdom that popular music encourages teenagers to abuse drugs.
The author, John Markert, of Cumberland University, Tennessee, says that although there has always been a generally hostile attitude towards hard drugs, teenage listeners today "are being exposed to more negative images of marijuana and LSD than older listeners".
Songs dealing with illegal drugs have always dotted popular music
but it was not until the 1960s that drug-taking became a constant theme. Markert's study is based on analysis of 784 songs since the 1960s that explicitly mention an illegal substance. It shows that musicians' attitudes towards cannabis and LSD has changed sharply over the years.
Markert found 100 songs with lyrics about heroin, more than half from the 1990s. But whether it is Lou Reed's "It's my wife, it's my life" from Heroin, Neil Young's "I watched the needle take another man" from The Needle and the Damage Done, or Pearl Jam's "It's my blood" from Blood, they demonstrate an increasingly hostile attitude in the 1990s.
Nearly twice as many songs deal with cocaine and they are also generally negative. Some lyrics from the 1960s and 1970s - such as "She don't lie, she don't lie, cocaine", from Eric Clapton's version of J.J. Cale's Cocaine, and the Grateful Dead's "Drivin' that train, high on cocaine" - are hardly negative.
But by the 1990s the attitude is far more trenchant, with rap music presenting cocaine, particularly crack, as a loser drug. Prince's 1990 New Power Generation is typical: "Cocaine was the thing that I took on ... I was headed 4 the kill, steal, destroy and die".
But the research argues that there has been a much bigger shift in attitudes towards marijuana and LSD, and musicians use their hostility to drugs to attack the older generation.
Markert says that, while Jimi Hendrix's Purple Haze personified 1960s acid rock, four-fifths of the songs that explicitly mention LSD are post-1980 and overwhelmingly hostile. "Contemporary young people view LSD as the drug of older, screwed-up middle-aged people," he says.
By Alan Travis and Sally James Gregory
October 29, 2003
Young musicians today are more likely than those of previous generations to decry drugs for the harm they can cause, according to research in the United States.
The study, based on an analysis of drug lyrics in English-language popular music since the 1960s, has been highlighted as one of the few pieces of good news in the annual survey by the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction, the European Union's drugs agency.
The research, published by the University of Texas in Austin, explodes the conventional wisdom that popular music encourages teenagers to abuse drugs.
The author, John Markert, of Cumberland University, Tennessee, says that although there has always been a generally hostile attitude towards hard drugs, teenage listeners today "are being exposed to more negative images of marijuana and LSD than older listeners".
Songs dealing with illegal drugs have always dotted popular music
but it was not until the 1960s that drug-taking became a constant theme. Markert's study is based on analysis of 784 songs since the 1960s that explicitly mention an illegal substance. It shows that musicians' attitudes towards cannabis and LSD has changed sharply over the years.
Markert found 100 songs with lyrics about heroin, more than half from the 1990s. But whether it is Lou Reed's "It's my wife, it's my life" from Heroin, Neil Young's "I watched the needle take another man" from The Needle and the Damage Done, or Pearl Jam's "It's my blood" from Blood, they demonstrate an increasingly hostile attitude in the 1990s.
Nearly twice as many songs deal with cocaine and they are also generally negative. Some lyrics from the 1960s and 1970s - such as "She don't lie, she don't lie, cocaine", from Eric Clapton's version of J.J. Cale's Cocaine, and the Grateful Dead's "Drivin' that train, high on cocaine" - are hardly negative.
But by the 1990s the attitude is far more trenchant, with rap music presenting cocaine, particularly crack, as a loser drug. Prince's 1990 New Power Generation is typical: "Cocaine was the thing that I took on ... I was headed 4 the kill, steal, destroy and die".
But the research argues that there has been a much bigger shift in attitudes towards marijuana and LSD, and musicians use their hostility to drugs to attack the older generation.
Markert says that, while Jimi Hendrix's Purple Haze personified 1960s acid rock, four-fifths of the songs that explicitly mention LSD are post-1980 and overwhelmingly hostile. "Contemporary young people view LSD as the drug of older, screwed-up middle-aged people," he says.
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