Gnarly weed songs you need to hear to believe

“SWEET LEAF” by Black Sabbath (1971)

It opens with someone coughing. Maybe Ozzy – I’ve never known. Then the heaviest guitar anyone had heard in 1971 kicks in and Ozzy’s high tenor – unaffected by the smoke, if it was indeed him coughing – begins the tale. “My life was empty, forever on a down – Until you took me, showed me around – My life is free now, my life is clear – I love you, sweet leaf, though you can’t hear.”

The song plows forward like a locomotive, with Tony Iommi going wild and Bill Ward and Geezer Butler hammering the rhythm. Ozzy then exhorts straight people to try it out before putting it down. I don’t think there was much euphemism involved. It is one of the greatest love songs in metal history, and it is sung to weed.

“RAINY DAY WOMAN #12 & 35” by Bob Dylan (1966)

The first song off one of the most important albums of all time has the most famous weed-related line in American music history. Dylan’s iconic “Everybody must get stoned” has received varied interpretations over the years. As with all Dylan lyrics, it remains cryptic, replete with multiple meanings.

Regardless of how he intended it, it became commonly known as a drug song. The ramshackle brass band accompaniment adds to that groove, and doesn’t the entire thing sound like the kind of song you would sing and chuckle over – as Dylan does – when you were high?