The Drunk Mixtape

The daily grind wears you down. Incompetent coworkers, some boss coming apart at the seams, the guy driving the bus just went through a divorce and stopped caring who he takes down with him. You’re fighting through it with whatever love and warmth you can still muster, and people are using it against you—misunderstanding you, resenting you, jealous that you still have some nerve, some directness, some ability to not completely fold. After enough of that, there’s only one reasonable response: get yourself properly, monumentally drunk.

When you’re doing that, you need a soundtrack. Something that understands where you’re at in each phase—the pre-drink warmup, the actual party, the point where it all starts to blur together. Babyshambles can do that. Anya Marina. Be Your Own Pet when you need something uglier. Something to carry you through the whole stupid carnival until you reach that moment where the room’s spinning and you’re screaming for your mom, and then Regina Spektor walks in like she saw this coming, and Samson makes it feel like the night was going somewhere.

What tracks work for you at each stage? Seriously—what’s your drinking playlist? Just don’t come at me with Jürgen Drews or Mickie Krause or whatever uncool German pop is supposed to get people dancing at weddings. There’s got to be some standard of taste, even after three drinks.