10 Radio-Friendly Songs About Drugs

1. Under The Bridge - Red Hot Chili Peppers

Anybody who has read Anthony Kiedis’ brilliantly raw autobiography Scar Tissue will be fully aware of the issues that the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ frontman has faced with drug addiction over the years.

Somewhat unusually, the enigmatic frontman actually wrote the best part of the lyrics to Under the Bridge having maintained sobriety for about three years, and uses the song to reflect upon the loneliness and isolation he felt from not indulging in substance abuse with his bandmates.

In turn, Kiedis then recounts an episode in which he abandoned then-girlfriend Ione Skye to score heroin and cocaine from the gang-riddled streets of one of LA’s seedier districts. When he sings “under the bridge downtown is where I drew some blood”, he’s being literal, and that painful encounter would prove to be an eye-opening low point for the artist.

Pleasingly though, despite that whirlwind of emotion and upset, the singer is able to work through it to an unexpectedly optimistic conclusion. How many other songs about drugs have a lyric as jarringly uplifting and resolute as “I don’t ever want to feel like I did that day”? Very, very few.