Sing a Song of Drug Use‐Abuse: Four Decades of Drug Lyrics in Popular Music–From the Sixties through the Nineties

Abstract

Songs dealing with illegal drugs have long dotted popular music. It was not until the aftermath of the sixties youth counterculture, however, that drug lyrics became a recurring musical motif. In the decades since, the lyrical treatment of drugs has undergone change. Heroin and cocaine have largely, though not exclusively, been treated antagonistically, with the animosity toward cocaine becoming more pronounced after crack cocaine was introduced in the mid‐1980s. Marijuana, on the other hand, has generally been perceived as innocuous, if not positively assessed, and this treatment has crossed the decades into the nineties. In more recent years, however, the positive assessment of marijuana has undergone change, with younger musicians more likely to decry the harm that drugs do than older musicians do. This prosocial aspect of contemporary popular music has been largely ignored.

« Chantez au Seigneur un chant nouveau… » (Ps.95.1) : le portrait de la musique rock chrétienne

“…À la lumière des Tableaux 1 et 2, nous avons décelé que onze études utilisent une méthodologie inductive (Aday & Austin, 2000;Bretthaueur, Zimmerman, & Banning, 2006;Cole, 1971;Cooper, 1985;Diamond, Bermudez, & Schensul, 2006;Markert, 2001;Ostlund & Kinnier, 1997;Primack, Dalton, Carroll, Agarwal, & Fine, 2008;Primack, Gold, Schwarz, & Dalton, 2008;Van Sickel, 2005;Weitzer & Kubrin, 2009), neuf utilisent une méthodologie déductive (Carey, 1969;Friedman, 1986;Hunnicutt & Andrews, 2009;Livengood & Ledoux Book, 2004;Murphey, 1992;Pedelty & Thompson, 2009;Petrie, Pennebaker, & Sivertsen, 2008;Pettijohn & Sacco, 2009;West & Martindale, 1996) et cinq une méthodologie mixte (Dukes, Bisel, Borega, Lobato, & Owens, 2003;Freudiger & Almquist, 1978;Herd, 2009;Hust, Brown, & L'Engle, 2008;Primack, Nuzzo, Rice, & Sargent, 2012 (Doyon, 2009;Laabidi, 2010;Lechaune, 1997), le Canada (Bénéteau, 2004;McDonald & Sparling, 2010), la France (Marcadet, 2000;Mucchielli, 1999), la Grande-Bretagne (Gammon, 1984 Nous trouvions que ce modèle permettait de déceler les valeurs prônées dans les chansons populaires de la musique rock chrétienne.…”

So What Does “Set Fire To The Rain” Really Mean? A Typology for Analyzing Pop Song Lyrics Using Narrative Theory and Semiotics

“…In these studies, the distinction between degrading and nondegrading sexual references plays a key role in defining the nature of pop songs' sexual content. Other research has focused on content analyses for substance abuse (Herd 2005, Markert 2001 and violence (Armstrong 2001).…”

An Ethno‐Methodological Approach to Cannabis and Music Perception, with EEG Brain Mapping in a Naturalistic Setting

“…Various authors have explored the cultural aspects of drug use among artists and its influence on artistic creativity and performance (Aldridge and Fachner 2006;Boyd 1992;Böhm 1999;de Rios and Janiger 2003;de Rios and Katz 1975;Fachner 2000aFachner , 2002aFachner , 2002bFachner 2006;Fraga and Lopez 2004;Kimmens 1977;Krippner 1977Krippner , 1985Kupfer 1996aKupfer , 1996bMarkert 2001;Masters and Houston 1968;Plant 1999;Plucker and Dana 1998;Shapiro 2003;Taeger 1988;TenBerge 1999). Barbara Kerr (1992) interviewed artists on drug habits and found a significantly higher tendency to consume cannabis in musicians compared to other artists.…”