![]() ![]() In that new light, “Rye Whiskey” takes on a manic despondency the singer can’t escape repeating his story.ħ. “Rye love isn’t good love boys,” Thile sings throughout the song, waiting until the end to get close to the story he’s been circling about his broken marriage, broken family, broken self. The band deftly walks a tightrope between an up-tempo party song celebrating whiskey and the song’s end, which shifts tone entirely. As Chris Thile sings, rye whiskey makes so many things in life better. The lone fiddle that begins the Punch Brothers’ take on the liquor-just a single note stretched across the string before a banjo joins the conversation-embodies the giddy feeling that a glass or two of whiskey typically provides. ![]() And it’s never done anybody a lick of good. Punch Brothers, “Rye Whiskey” Rye whiskey has a place of repute in folk and country music thanks to Woody Guthrie and Tex Ritter. “Whiskey’s harder to keep than a woman / And it’s half as sweet,” Cooley sings, before admitting, “But women without whiskey.” His voice trails off and repeats the line, but he never settles on an actual answer to that thought. The central struggle to live without whiskey-to handle women without a glass first-arises viscerally in the song’s guitar riff, which itself feels like a question. Off the band’s 2001 album Southern Rock Opera, “Women Without Whiskey” features Cooley’s honest vocals contemplating what a life without whiskey looks like, even while he knows maintaining his current relationship with the bottle will surely kill him. Drive-by Truckers, “Women Without Whiskey” Within southern rock’s annals, it’s long been a toss-up about who can write a more despondent song, Patterson Hood or Mike Cooley. It’s an untraditional song about whiskey compared to others on this list, but the jazzy number and the lyrics’ meter provide a different perspective on the drink.ĩ. A bottle pops at the song’s end, and it’s easy to imagine Holiday uncorking a bottle of scotch to drown her sorrows. “I jumped out of the frying pan / And right into the fire / When I lost me a cheating man / And got a no-count liar,” she sings in the opening lines. She’s “Riffin the Scotch,” bemoaning leaving one deleterious relationship only to find herself in another, and in that way playing on the idea of “riff” in popular music, which repeats a short, instrumental phrase. Although she doesn’t mention drinking whiskey once in the song, the title says it all. Billie Holiday, “Riffin the Scotch” A short song that’s mostly instrumental, “Riffin the Scotch” only contains one verse, but it’s a powerful one in the hands of Holiday’s lamenting, ice-against-glass vocals. Here are the 10 best whiskey songs about love and heartache.ġ0. There’s something storied about whiskey, which is why so many songwriters from nearly every genre continue turning to it to help express their joy and pain. But more than any other instance of alcohol in songs, whiskey-be it scotch, bourbon or rye-is the amber ambrosia from the gods for those cataloguing the experience of love in all its agony and ecstasy. There are a countless number of songs about drinking, and how it eases heartbreak or, more often than not, contributes to it in the first place. ![]() It almost seems like a rite of passage for a country artist to pen or cover a song involving the stuff because it’s so intertwined with the region that produced the music in the first place. Hell, country music could write a book on whiskey. James Joyce said it best when he wrote, “The light music of whiskey falling into a glass-an agreeable interlude.” Whether you prefer whiskey over the rocks or neat, it doesn’t just sing its own song, it’s also the quintessential liquor for songwriting. ![]() It’s a sound so melodious it might as well be considered a kind of music: The clink of ice cubes against a glass tumbler, the splash of warm amber liquid, the crinkle as the ice begins to melt. ![]()
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