10 Radio-Friendly Songs About Drugs

10. Time To Pretend - MGMT

MGMT burst onto the scene with debut album Oracular Spectacular in 2007 like a pair of neon star children, bringing flower power and psychedelic craziness to the digital age.

A perfect encapsulation of their offbeat sound, Time To Pretend became something of a calling card for the American duo, and was absolutely everywhere for a while, used in everything from the trailer of Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland adaptation, to the obligatory feature in an episode of Skins.

Lyrically, the band wore their influences firmly on their sleeves. In the first verse alone they proclaim: “I'll move to Paris, shoot some heroin and **** with the stars, you man the island and the cocaine and the elegant cars”, but if that’s not enough to convince you of just how heavily drugs were involved in the writing and production of this tune, just listen to the two-piece’s own reasoning behind it.

Speaking at Abbey Road at the height of their popularity, they said: “We wrote Time to Pretend our senior year of college, and the music was inspired by a praying mantis we had in our house. She laid eggs and it died, and we laid the egg case on this kinda model pirate ship on the mantle piece, and the eggs hatched and all these baby praying mantises were climbing up the rigging of the ship, and it was pretty crazy…”

Whatever you say lads, whatever you say.