Drugs and Rock 'n' Roll

I've been thinking alot about songs that have gotten away with being played on mainstream radio without being censored. I've been looking particularly at songs with explicit drug references. "Golden Brown" by the Stranglers is one. It's about heroin.

Even Pink has managed to get a reference to morphine into one of her singles. In the same song, "Just like a pill" the word "bitch" is erased. This is a little odd, given that Meredith Brooks' song "Bitch" was never censored. If the difference between the two songs is the intent of the word, the reason is a little weak. I'm quite sure worse things have appeared on commercial radio. Any reference to ho's comes to mind...

Of course, some artists don't have a hope in hell of getting a drug reference past the censors. Snoop Dogg for example can say "When the pimps in the crib ma" but can't say "and I roll the best weed 'cos I got it going on". Perhaps it's a little blatant, but you get the feeling he couldn't get away with euphimisms either.

There is one song from the 90's that was ubiquitous, catchy, played at every school disco, and in hindsight is just as blatant as Snoop is. There is a difference though, this song is a 4 minute hook-laden song about a "Class A" drug. (or 2 or 3)

"Semi-Charmed Life" by Third-Eye Blind.

Alot of people are aware that this song is about crystal meth. But the truly astounding fact about this song is that not one word was ever censored for airplay.

Let's deconstruct it. The first verse:
I'm packed and I'm holding
I'm smiling, she's living, she's golden, she lives for me
says she lives for me, Ovation, her own motivation,
she comes round and she goes down on me.

Okay, so in those four lines we have that he's packed and holding a crack pipe. We also have a reference to Ovation, which is a drug company that makes a methamphetamine pill, and finally a reference to receiving oral sex, possibly in return for a hit. The next lines of note are:

And I speak to you like the chorus to the verse,
Chop another line like a coda with a curse

So they have given up on the pipe and are snorting it (or coke) instead. It continues:

The sky was gold, it was Rose
I was taking sips of it through my nose
and I wish I could get back there, some place back there
Smiling in the pictures you would take,
Doing crystal meth will lift you up until you break.

I originally mis-heard the last line as about Mescaline. Clearly not! Rose is good quality meth.

I won't stop, I won't come down I keep stock,
With a tick-tock rhythm I bumped for the drop,
and then I bumped up
I took the hit that I was given, then I bumped again
Then I bumped again

The singer doesn't want to come down off his high so he bumps. Bumping is when you take a little to maintain a high, but not enough to OD.
Quite alot of the next verse is about the sex you can have for hours on Meth. Then this verse, that was often cut out of the radio edit for length, kicks in:

And when the plane came in, she said she was crashing
The velvet rips in this city
And we tripped on the urge to feel alive,
And now I'm struggling to survive

The end of the song makes it clear that it's a co-dependant relationship based completely off the drugs they are taking. This song was out quite a while before the "Ice epidemic" was in full swing in the media. Perhaps if it was to come out now, in an arguably more conservative time and with the general population knowing more about Crystal Meth and addiction it would be censored. I would like to think not, but suspect it would be.

So, does anyone else have any songs about drugs that have escaped the censors? Comment away!