Drinking Songs

American drinking songs fall into two main categories, with much overlap: songs about drinking (with lines like “It’s beer, beer, beer that makes me wanna cheer”) and songs generally sung when one is drinking or drunk. They are almost always loud, boisterous, and long. (“Ninety-Nine Bottles of Beer on the Wall” is seldom sung from start to finish—an earlier version had only forty-nine bottles.) Often, they are sentimental or profane. These songs are usually sung slightly out of tune in large groups, with the understanding that sober people are too repressed to sing them, but, fortified with alcohol, singers can drape arms around one another’s shoulders and let loose.