Album: It’s A Shame About Ray
Year: 1992
No seriously, exactly how weird was it in 1993? Not only did a major record company let a next Next Big Thing make a song about his drug-taking the centerpiece of his breakthrough album, they even funded a video for it.
And while they changed it to the more innocuous “Buddy” for the reissue that they appended “Mrs. Robinson,” that was a formality that probably fooled exactly noone, because from the organ-driven, languorous vibe of the music to the emotional truth of the lyrics, “My Drug Buddy” was an gorgeously chilling cry for help.
I’m too much with myself
I wanna be someone else
I’m too much with myself
I wanna be someone else
I’m too much with myself
I wanna be someone else
In 1993, the period just after the period where the hard drugs weren’t just for the bartenders, but pretty much for anybody who wanted them, “My Drug Buddy” rang all too true. While some of the other songs on It’s a Shame About Ray were about other people, not this one.
And so at the time you could marvel at the naked truth of “My Drug Buddy” while worrying about what it meant for his seemingly limitless future, and nowadays wonder if he had at least one more record as great as It’s A Shame About Ray in him, or if it was just a one-shot, and it was all just doomed from the start.
“My Drug Buddy”
Every Certain Song Ever
A filterable, searchable & sortable database with links to every “Certain Song” post I’ve ever written.
Certain Songs Spotify playlist
(It’s recommended that you listen to this on Spotify as their embed only has 200 songs.)
Support “Certain Songs” with a donation on Patreon
Go to my Patreon page
No comments:
Post a Comment