Sure it was. It was more popular than Herion Girl by Everclear, but not as big of a hit as Semi-Charmed Kinda Life by 3Eb, High by Feeder or even High by Jimmie’s Chicken Shack, but you’re right, there’s at least a few popular, fairly recent songs about drug abuse on the radio these days. I’m sure someone could come up with an exhustive list of them.
Frankly, I’m surprised to hear Come out and play by the Offspring on the radio on a regular basis. I was sure they’d shelf it after the school shootings, but they didn’t.
elfkin477: We can add any number of Cypress Hill songs to our list, too.
If I had a couple of spare hours, I’d comb through this list and find a modern counterpart to every single song mentioned in this thread. As I said previously, have you guys not been listening to your radios or something?
Actually, yes. I stopped listening to the radio about the time that I got a CD player for my house, both cars and a portable. Most of favorites are obscure indie stuff that you would never hear on the radio. Too good for mass consumption.
The lyrics to the Beatles, “We Can Work It Out”–were they trying to be ironic/
“Think of what you’re saying, you can get it wrong and still you think that it’s alright
Think of what I’m saying, we can work it out so get it straight or say goodnight”
So, we can work it out, as long as you change to my way of thinking.
How would that not fly today? Besides, when you get down to it that’s how 90% of people have “arguments”. They’re great lyrics in that sense.
Also, someone mentioned “Getting Better”. The whole point of the song is “It’s getting better all the time it can’t get much worse.”
I think we need to make a difference between songs that were meant to be shocking, like old blues numbers, or “Brown Sugar”, and songs that reflected accepted ideas of the time.
I don’t find all the early-sixties “sweet sixteen” songs wrong in any way because mostly they were targeted at people about that age. However, I don’t think they’d fly terribly well today.
I tried posting this an hour ago, but the board ate my post.
Anyway, I want to add my name to the list of people that thinks this thread is a little weird. All of these songs would fly today. Like some have already mentioned, the stuff by Eminem, Prodigy and Limp Bizkit is a lot worse than any of these songs.
And then there’s ones that haven’t even been mentioned yet like “Closer” by NIN and “The Sickness” by Disturbed, which often show up on radio edited but still very understandable.