The Most Popular White People Drinking Songs
I’ve been studying my people for awhile now. Ever since I went to college and realized there are a lot of us in this country.
What I started noticing a few years back was a trend, a trend I can no longer escape. I’ve seen what I can never un-see.
If you are at a white people party – or an especially white people bar – long enough on a rowdy enought Friday night, (rowdy is a word white people use to mean drunk and disorderly) you will hear one of these songs not only played, but sung along with.
Now when I say white people, I by and large mean it like most people subconsciously mean it: a term reserved for the mainstream, middle-to-upper-middle-class white person.
There are many white people who never identified with that culture, and therefore, any of these songs.
And even some of those people know the words to these songs.
In between those two venn diagrams of people, there are white people who never identified with them – myself – and who then drank so much for so long around so many middle-to-upper-middle-class white people that they learned every word of these songs.
Before you read this list and say, “but those songs are too old” I feel inclined to pre-mind you that the United State’s of America’s official national anthem was just lyrics written to the melody of a British drinking song. A drinking song people sang…in bars…while drunk…because it’s a drinking song.
These are anthems because they are old and everyone has heard them.
“Started From the Bottom” is a classic, but it’s not that old and seems an odd choice given the history of white people in America, no matter how hype we get when it comes on.
And so I give you the most popular white people drinking songs. Songs that, if nothing else, will make you better prepared for your next white people outing.
#7. “Take Me Home Country Roads”, John Denver
John Denver’s break out single does wonders to the white soul buried deep within all white people.
In each city dwelling yuppie lies the hippy-dippy heart of a country boy who just wants to live a simple farmers life: chewing on hay, drinking moonshine, and not wearing shoes while never doing any farm work.
I’ll admit I wasn’t much into John Denver, or this song, until I heard it covered by a country-polka band at an Oktoberfest celebration in northeast Minneapolis where the accordion’s mournful swell hit some before unknown well of whiteness deep inside me.
And if a country-polka band playing at an Oktoberfest in Minnesota isn’t the whitest event you can think of, congratulations. You are exceptionally white.
But seriously, an accordion playing these cord changes will melt your honky heart.
#6. “Piano Man”, Billy Joel
Billy Joel. A piano playing pop star somehow whiter than Elton John.
I’ve always loved this song and think Billy Joel gets too much undeserved hate. The man had melodies goddamnit. Does everybody have to be cool anyways? To paraphrase Chuck Klosterman, Can’t we just have some people who make songs that never try to be cool?
This is a late entry to this list. I’ve seen most of these songs sung in public for a decade plus, but this one seems to have gained some steam in the last 5.
#5. “Margaritaville”, Jimmy Buffet
Goddamnit Jimmy Buffet. How do you fuck up burgers? How do you fuck up Hawaiian shirts and not giving a fuck? How do you make Margaritas uncool?
This song has taken the most amount of drunken white events for me to come around too. And that’s the point of this entire list.
Again, if you’re white enough , for long enough, and drink in enough bars, you will learn all of these songs and you will start yelling them when they come on towards the end of happy hour.
Just remember, you “gotta have the fucking salt!” is an ad-lib after “my lost shaker of salt”… because white people like doing this weird thing where we add words to drinking songs that we like.
#4. “Friends in Low Places”, Garth Brooks
Sure, the above video version has a Timberlake guest spot (which I included here because wordpress can embed youtube), but I recommend watching this version from the Today show.
Hoda says it all with her introduction: “sing along…because how could you not?”
You could not if you were not raised this white, or this (Hoda level) drunk.
Even on The Today Show, Garth Brooks doesn’t really want to play this song. His body language scerams, “I’m just here to promote my new album”, but we whites must have our anthems when we’ve gathered in a large group.
This song is pretty fun to sing along to, I can’t lie, and it remains so high on the list because deep down, all us whites want the feeling of not being privileged, of coming from low places.
We still want the advantages that come with privilege, don’t get me wrong, but we want to feel like we don’t have it (see: Miley Cyrus circa Mike Will Made It days). We get the best of both worlds that way.
It’s a real, “having it both ways” sing along.
#3. “Wagon Wheel”, Darius Rucker
This is #3 with a bullet. By the time this article is released it could very well be #1. It’s country, it talks about the south, and there is nothing tricky about remembering “rock me mama”.
Apparently the song writers thought the same thing over the nearly 80 years it took this song to be written. But that stories for another post, literally, our 4th of July post from this year.
#2. “Sweet Caroline”, Neil Diamond
Bum! Bum! Bum!
You knew this was going to be here. If you’re pressed for time on your way to a white people outing, turn this one on with the hand that’s not pounding a Keystone Light (you’re pounding a Keystone Light right?) and make a mental note of when the horns go “bum bum bum”.
You don’t even need to learn any of the words. In fact, don’t learn any of the words. Live on the edge.
Sing “bum bum bum” right on the first try and your white friends will look at you, nod, and smile an agreeing smile. You will have become one of them, or at the least you’ve made them feel comfortable about how white they’re being and there’s nothing white people like more than feeling comfortable about being white.
#1. “Don’t Stop Believing”, Journey
Sure it’s debatable.
I really didn’t plan for this to be number 1.
I thought it peaked too hot and too hard following its re-rise-to-prominence feature in Season 4 Episode 4 of Family Guy.
But then I watched it unironically close down a wedding last year.
I saw the greatest minds of my generation drink so much beer at The Vegas Lounge that by the time someone starts karaoke-ing this, our defenses are worn through. We give in.
As Youtuber Johnny Mac points out about the Family Guy clip, in a comment I have since lost track of: “This was the first in a series of TV moments that made Don’t Stop Believin popular in the 21st century”
The White Sox tried to make it a thing at their World Series celebration.
If this “performance”, with its Curb Your Enthusiasm level of cringe didn’t kill the song, nothing will.
Larry Bird
I’m not shitting on people for liking these songs. I’m just trying to point out that the unconditional love of them is not universal, but rather, a cultural thing.
White people actually do have culture, most of it is mainstream American culture because America is a really white place. Look at the dress code for any middle of the road, corporate American office, and you will see white culture.
The songs on this list serve as a kind of unlived nostalgia for my generation. We weren’t around when most of these songs rose in popularity. They are our parents songs, passed down the way folk songs were. They are anthems because they are easy to remember when we’re drunk.
America is still a really white place, butit’s not going to stay that way (scary!), so white people, let’s band together and pick a song that we can sing off-key, half in the bag, and sing it until we lose our voices and sense of entitlement.