Whoops, change that second group to sing on “you”.
All that alcohol has damaged my brain…
Damn straight, my good man. In particular:
*And now that I’ve a pile
I’ll go down to the Chelsea
I’ll walk in on my feet
But I’ll leave there on my back
I am going, I am going
Any which way the wind may be blowing
I am going, I am going
Where streams of whiskey are flowing*
One of my personal faves off of Red Roses for Me, a nice sloppy drunken good time of an album if ever there was one.
Jimmy Buffet songs are fairly common as well. Margaritaville in particular. The Pina Colada song. Plus I’ve heard Hey Jude break out a time or two(probably becuase no matter now drunk you are, you can still sing the nanananas)
American Honky-Tonk Bar Association (Garth)
I Like Beer
Jose Cuervo
Okie From Muskogee (Merle)
The Way I Am (Merle)
Sing Me Back Home (Merle)
…any other Merle I can remember the words to 
George Thorogood is also a font of such songs. My favorites:
*One Bourbon, One Scotch One Beer
*I Drink Alone
*If You Don’t Start Drinking, I’m Gonna Leave
Well, when it comes to class, no drinking song has more than Gaudeamus Igitur. There’s just something to be said for getting drunk and singing in Latin. Actually, I’ve never tried, but it sure sounds cool.
Jimmy Buffet was always my favorite drinking music back in the days when I really use to drink. My best friend and I use to make Pina Coladas or Margaritas (from scrach of course) and play his Songs You Know By HeartCD.
Good drinking songs on that CD are Margaritaville, Changes In Lattiudes, Boat Drinks, Why Don’t We Get Drunk (And Screw).
Our favorite drinking song was Volcano.
(Of course our favorite jogging song was Cheeseburger in Paradise).
“Salty Dog” -Flogging Molly
“One Burbon, One Scotch, One Beer” -George Thoroughgood (sp?)
“Barroom Hero” -the Dropkick Murphys
punk snot dead,
broccoli!
Can’t forget the refrain sung by the drunken locals in the Sam Peckinpah movie “Straw Dogs” (1971) :
"Now some men goes for women
and some men goes for boys
But my love wears a woolly coat
and makes a baa-ing noise"
Oddly enough, I don’t drink. At all. Never have. And yet, being from a very Irish family, my brothers and I grew up singing songs by the Clancy Brothers, the Dubliners, the Wolfe Tones, etc… and loads of the songs we sang were about drinking, though we didn’t really grasp that at the time.
We sang some doozies, too, at a VERY early age. When I was about 8, my brothers and I sang “The Black Velvet Band” and “The Seven Drunken Nights” at a backyard “Jerry Lewis Muscular Dystrophy Festival” (remember those?). At the time of course, though we knew all the lyrics, we were WAY too young to have any idea what we were singing about (and my parents, I suppose, were too amused to be shocked or angry by our choice of songs).
In case you don’t know, “The Seven Drunken Nights” is about a Irishman who keeps stumbling over clues that his wife is screwing other men while he’s at the pub… but he’s too drunk and dense to piece the clues together. As for “The Black Velvet Band,” that’s about a prostitute who plies some poor guy with liquor, frames him for robbery, and gets him shipped off to an Australian prison!
Good songs for an 8 year old, huh? And to think, my mom worried when I started listening to Black Sabbath! She didn’t realize, the damage was already done long before!
Anyway, those remain two of the all-time great drinking songs. “Whiskey in the Jar” is also great, when performed by anyone but Metallica.
I kind of like the songs by Neil Diamond, such as “Red Red Wine”.
I’ve only heard it played by Great White.
For some reason, I’ve always been fond of country music as drinking songs. Strange that it never appeals to me when I’m sober. “You Never Call Me by My Name” is one of my favorites. “Friends in Low Places” is great, too. A buddy of mine made up his own lyrics to that song. They’re actually pretty vulgar and not very amusing when one’s not in the right state of mind.
I got crabs in low places
Where my balls itch and my dick is chafing
But it’ll be OK
So whaddya say?
See the little goblin,
See his little feet,
see his little nosey-wose,
Isn’t the goblin sweet?
(YES!)
The whole crowd shouts the “YES” bit, of course, then the star of the evening repeats the verse ad infinitum. Or ad nauseam, at least. It’s sung to the tune of “Round and round the garden like a teddy bear”, and comes originally from the second series of Blackadder.
Phil Collins’ “In The Air Tonight” sung with absolute passion and solemnity can be a good ice-breaker after roughly one and a half bottles of claret. Other interesting expriences can be gained from trying to sing the themes to the A-team, Battlestar Galactica, and Knight Rider. For a truly appalling cacophony, the percussion part of Knight Rider must also be sung.
Of course I have now moved on from such things. I do miss my single student days sometiems, though.
Back in the very early '60’s at a jerk-water college in southern MO, beside the standard “Frenchmen never eat bullybergers”, the evening tended to end with a rousing, though somewhat incoherent, version of “Rock of Ages”, as in: Rock of ages cleft for me… This probably had somthing to do with resentment over manditory, assigned seats, take-names-and-explain-to-the-Dean-where-you-were, chapel every GD Tuesday morning. The song ended when someone fell in the river or a fist fight broke out.
On mature reflecction, I don’t see how there could be a better end of the night song than the Clancy Bros. version of “The Parting Glass.” “Flower of Scotland” echos nicely at 2:00 AM but it does offend the neighbors.
One we used to sing frequently after a binge at university… it’s almost impossibly to sing badly, even when you’re really, really drunk. I apologise in advance for any mispellings
The Philosophers Song (Monty Python)
Immanual Kant was a real pissant who was very rarely stable
Heidegger, Heidegger was a boozy beggar who could think you under the table
David Hume could out consume Schopenhauer and Hegel
And Wittgenstein was a beery swine who was just as schloshed as Schlegel
There’s nothing Nietzche couldn’t teach ya 'bout the raising of the wrist
Socrates himself was permanently pissed
John Stuart Mill, of his own free will, on half a pint of shandy was particularly ill
Plato they say, could stick it away - half a crate of whiskey every day
Aristotle, Aristotle was a bugger for the bottle, Hobbes was fond of his dram
And Rene’ Descartes was a drunken fart: “I drink, therefore I am”
Yes, Socrates, himself, is particularly missed
A lovely little thinker but a bugger when he’s pissed
My current vote is for In Taberna, from Carmina Burana. I wanna be at that party!
Ethilrist, you’re a god! No, seriously. I dled that song last night, and I can’t stop listening to it. I’m going to learn that so I can sing it, now…
When I go out, pretty much what Spoons said is common. Any Irish drinking song, anything by Stan Rogers or Great Big Sea…
Cheers.
I’ve gotta nominate “The Lost Weekend”, a mid 80’s album of original music by Danny and Dusty, a group of musicians from some relatively obscure bands of the time: Green on Red, The Dream Syndicate, and The Long Ryders. As the liner notes say, it was recorded in
“…32 hours, from sundown Friday to last call Saturday night, we decided to take all of Sunday off to nurse our hangovers and bask in the glory of our frantic, wild, session. A weekend? We didn’t need no stinkin’ weekend.”
An absolute hidden gem, and my favorite album of the entire decade.