Hangovers in Harmonies

With COVID-19’s effects rolling over into the new year, and our new variant (shouldn’t it be technically called COVID-20?) still wreaking havoc, we are experiencing what could be called a 2020 hangover. Normally at least a hangover is associated with enjoyment the night before but that isn’t the case with 2020, so I thought we’d look at the normal type of hangover that many of us would have normally recently experienced at this time of year. Therefore, I thought this month I’d delve into how many singers and bands were regretting in the past overdoing things in the events of the night before. Who knows? Perhaps songwriters feeling terrible might cheer us all up.

So let’s start with the most apt name for a band writing about hangovers, which must be British band Blur. Lead singer Damon Albarn wrote a song about finding a positive direction ahead despite feeling the effects of a depressed and drunken Christmas back in December 1992. Website Songfacts explains how at that point, Blur were at their lowest point following disappointing sales of their first album and a recent disastrous live performance. They had failed to hit the big time yet with the album Parklife, were heavily in debt and on the verge of being dropped by their label. Perhaps even more depressingly, Albarn was spending Christmas with his parents and getting himself thoroughly drunk. His father woke up on Christmas morning to hear his son tinkering on the piano, producing what became one of their early hits: Bad Head. Guardian journalist and writer John Harris wrote in the book The Last Party of the song: "Somewhere from behind a hangover, its lyrics wound the existentialist notion of nausea around a panoramic picture of London that managed to be both beautiful and unsettling.” During a gig at unusual music venue the East Anglian Railway Museum, Albarn announced that Bad Head, from the album Parklife was also "about hangovers." He added: "Not that we want to encourage that kind of behaviour."

He didn’t need to encourage other musicians to excess as many seemed to be regretting overindulgence all on their own. Better In The Morning by Little Boots back in 2015 was about her hangover as was Champagne Problem by Nick Jonas in 2016, and Cigarettes and Chocolate Milk by Rufus Wainwright. In the latter, Wainwright was not referring to causes of a hangover, but his cravings during one when living in the infamous Chelsea Hotel in New York City. Songfacts explains that “after a long night out, [Wainwright] woke up in the afternoon bleary and thirsty. He decided he must have chocolate milk, so went to a store, bought some, gulped it all down, and felt sick to his stomach. Then he smoked a cigarette, which made him feel even worse. Fully aware of the symbolism, Wainwright was able to see himself objectively and write an honest song about it.” Wainwright more recently wrote a later song about hangovers during a period of addiction called Early Morning Madness in 2020.

Much earlier in the 70s, Do You Feel Like We Do [sic] by guitar rocker Peter Frampton asks listeners if they too were hungover. The song came about as Frampton went to rehearsal incredibly hungover, strumming some chords he was playing the night before on his acoustic guitar. His band liked the tune and asked Frampton to create lyrics for it, to which his response was, "I can't, I have a really bad hangover." The result was that bandmates told him to just write about that, and so he did. If you too are suffering the effects of a hangover and are musically unable to benefit from it, then why not banish the feeling with a song by Florence and The Machine? According to the NME, singer-songwriter Florence Welch said of her song Shake It Out, “when you've got a hangover, it is almost like a hangover cure.”

As Frank Sinatra once said, “I feel sorry for people that don't drink, because when they wake up in the morning, that is the best they are going to feel all day.” It might not be much, but with the new year not starting off as well as we’d hoped, perhaps we can take Frank’s words and know we all too before too long will feel better soon. Perhaps not within a day, but hopefully not too far into 2021. For zoom or (eventually) group Sussex talks and motorised tours, please call All-Inclusive History on 07504 863867 or email info@allinclusivehistory.org. Other tours, talks and events are available including ‘Spooky Worthing, ‘Brilliant Brighton’, ‘Super Sussex’ and ‘Scrumptious Sussex’. Kevin’s next book, ‘Celebrating Brighton and Hove’ can be pre-ordered from www.waterstones.com/book/celebrating-brighton-andhove/kevin-newman/9781398100206 for £15.99