Hangover In Harmony

HANGOVERS IN HARMONIES

By Kevin Newman, a Sussex-born author, historian, tour guide and history teacher

With COVID-19’s effects rolling over into Bad Head, from the album Parklife was also "about the new year, and our new variant hangovers." He added: "Not that we want to (shouldn’t it be technically called COVID- encourage that kind of behaviour." 20?) still wreaking havoc, we are experiencing He didn’t need to encourage other musicians to what could be called a 2020 hangover. Normally at excess as many seemed to be regretting least a hangover is associated with enjoyment the overindulgence all on their own. Better In The night before but that isn’t the case with 2020, so I Morning by Little Boots back in 2015 was about thought we’d look at the normal type of hangover her hangover as was Champagne Problem by Nick that many of us would have normally recently Jonas in 2016, and Cigarettes and Chocolate Milk experienced at this time of year. Therefore, I by Rufus Wainwright. In the latter, Wainwright thought this month I’d delve into how many was not referring to causes of a hangover, but his singers and bands were regretting in the past cravings during one when living in the infamous overdoing things in the events of the night before. Chelsea Hotel in New York City. Songfacts explains Who knows? Perhaps songwriters feeling terrible that “after a long night out, [Wainwright] woke up might cheer us all up. in the afternoon bleary and thirsty. He decided he

So let’s start with the most apt name for a band must have chocolate milk, so went to a store, writing about hangovers, which must be British bought some, gulped it all down, and felt sick to band Blur. Lead singer Damon Albarn wrote a his stomach. Then he smoked a cigarette, which song about finding a positive direction ahead made him feel even worse. Fully aware of the despite feeling the effects of a depressed and symbolism, Wainwright was able to see himself drunken Christmas back in December 1992. objectively and write an honest song about it.” Website Songfacts explains how at that point, Blur Wainwright more recently wrote a later song were at their lowest point following disappointing about hangovers during a period of addiction sales of their first album and a recent disastrous called Early Morning Madness in 2020. live performance. They had failed to hit the big Much earlier in the 70s, Do You Feel Like We Do time yet with the album Parklife, were heavily in [sic] by guitar rocker Peter Frampton asks listeners debt and on the verge of being dropped by their if they too were hungover. The song came about label. Perhaps even more depressingly, Albarn was as Frampton went to rehearsal incredibly spending Christmas with his parents and getting hungover, strumming some chords he was playing himself thoroughly drunk. His father woke up on the night before on his acoustic guitar. His band Christmas morning to hear his son tinkering on the liked the tune and asked Frampton to create lyrics piano, producing what became one of their early for it, to which his response was, "I can't, I have a hits: Bad Head. Guardian journalist and writer John really bad hangover." The result was that Harris wrote in the book The Last Party of the bandmates told him to just write about that, and song: "Somewhere from behind a hangover, its so he did. If you too are suffering the effects of a lyrics wound the existentialist notion of nausea hangover and are musically unable to benefit from around a panoramic picture of London that it, then why not banish the feeling with a song by managed to be both beautiful and unsettling.” Florence and The Machine? According to the NME, During a gig at unusual music venue the East singer-songwriter Florence Welch said of her song Anglian Railway Museum, Albarn announced that Shake It Out, “when you've got a hangover, it is