Lifestyle
For Dry January, we ask a music critic for great songs about not drinking
Pink’s 2009 pop hit “Sober” may be the best known song about sobriety. She’s shown above at The BRIT Awards in London in 2019.
Gareth Cattermole/Getty Images
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Gareth Cattermole/Getty Images
Pink’s 2009 pop hit “Sober” may be the best known song about sobriety. She’s shown above at The BRIT Awards in London in 2019.
Gareth Cattermole/Getty Images
For those who’ve discovered that Dry January has been more excruciating than expected, we have help: a dive into great songs that explore sobriety.
“I’m coming up on five years sober so this is all extremely personal to me,” says music critic Sasha Frere-Jones, who worked at The New Yorker for a decade. His 2023 memoir Earlier reflects on his coming of age in New York City, his trajectory as a writer and musician, his family and his recovery from alcohol abuse.
Even as someone actively working a 12 step program, Frere-Jones says his first instinct was to reject the idea of good songs about not drinking.
“Music sort of makes me drunk, and I don’t want to think about sobriety when I listen to music,” he says. “Don’t preach to me. Don’t tell me what to do. I don’t want that in my music.”
He associated drinking with certain artists he loved, such as Elliott Smith.
“That was my guy,” he says. “I don’t think anyone has ever written about drinking better than Elliott.” In “Between The Bars” Smith appears to be singing to the alcohol itself: “Drink up, baby, look at the stars / I’ll kiss you again, between the bars / When I’m where I’m seeing you there with your hands in the air / Waiting to finally be caught.”
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Elliott Smith, along with musicians such as Amy Winehouse, was known for music that seemed to romanticize abusing alcohol and drugs. It should go without saying that both of them are dead, after years of heartbreaking addiction.
So what are the good sobriety songs?
When asked to identify good songs about not drinking, Frere-Jones was at first stumped. Then he remembered “Straight Edge,” by Minor Threat, the Washington, D.C., punk band founded in 1980 by Ian MacKaye. It mocks the predictability and commercialism of using drugs and alcohol to escape the world.
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“It’s such an amazing piece of music.” Frere-Jones says. “The reason we talk about straight edge punks is because of this song. And I am roughly the age that Ian MacKaye is. He sang it as a teenager and I heard it as a teenager.”
Many years later, during a horrible time of his life, Frere-Jones was in a hospital psychiatric ward when he first heard the song “I’m Blessed,” by Charlie Wilson.
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“We would all get together and they would play us songs,” he remembers. “And it was grim. A lot of people in that room were in extremely bad shape. And this amazing woman kept playing ‘I’m Blessed.’ And the first time I heard it, I was like, ‘Lady, this is a little too cheerful.’”
“But then I fell in love with the song,” he continues. “I had to get over myself and absorb it as a song. I know Charlie’s story and I think it is a sobriety song.”
Charlie Wilson was the successful lead singer of the Gap Band, known for crossover R&B hits in the late 1970s. Then he became addicted to alcohol, cocaine and crack.
“He ended up very unhoused,” Frere-Jones says. “He ended up in really, really dire, dire straits, like no-joke stuff. He suffered greatly when he was using.”
But the singer met a drug counselor he ended up marrying. He has remained sober for decades. “And he’s just so happy. [‘I’m Blessed’] definitely makes being sober sound pretty great,” Frere-Jones says.
Sobriety as a state of mind
He suggests the best known sobriety song may be Pink’s “Sober.” Her 2009 pop hit was also nominated for a Grammy. Pink has been open about her past substance abuse, and the song refers to it, with lyrics such as, “Why do I feel this party’s over / No pain inside/ You’re like perfection/ But how do I feel this good sober?”
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“I don’t think there’s anyone who has gotten sober who doesn’t understand every single word of this song,” Frere-Jones notes. “And it’s also really good because it goes back and forth, from the specific to the general. Also, I just love Pink and I think it’s catchy. I’m inclined to believe anything Pink says.”
Pink is among a surprising number of celebrity musicians, all women, who have written songs entitled “Sober” in the past few years. They include Kelly Clarkson, Demi Lovato, Selena Gomez and Lorde.
“I did not expect there to be so many songs simply called, ‘Sober,’ ” Frere-Jones admits. “A lot of them are using sober or sobriety as a metaphor or state of mind. It’s interesting, the gender divide. I mean, I don’t think we have that many male pop stars, to be frank. But the men don’t have songs called ‘Sober.’ “
Frere-Jones suggests these musicians may be staring down the shame and stigma of addiction. “I feel like women are just, in general, stronger and more honest,” he says. “I’m not surprised that the women are more like, ‘Yeah, I got sober, here’s my song,’ and the guys have to be like, ‘What’s a clever way of saying this?’ “
“The Demi Lovato one is really pretty raw,” he adds. “It almost isn’t a song. It’s like a Tumblr post, and I mean that in the most admiring way. I feel like her public [struggles] have been very agonized, really agitated and touching. And in some ways, [the song is] one of the most important because if it’s too euphemistic, people ignore it. Demi Lovato is just like saying it out loud, in plain language. And I think that’s really powerful.”
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Songs of recovery
If you want to hear both men and women singing about sobriety, you will find that in country music. “Rap and country are two great American genres in that they contain the most evidence of daily life, and they often are where things show up the fastest,” Frere-Jones says. He describes Kenny Chesney’s 1998 hit, “That’s Why I’m Here,” as “the single most AA meeting song I’ve ever heard,” a joyful song about recovery.
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Aerosmith’s “Amazing,” by Steven Tyler, is another buoyant song about how sobriety feels.
“We say it in meetings and we don’t say it in the world enough,” Frere-Jones observes. “Like, bro, you’re not going to be white knuckling. You’re not thinking about what you’re missing. You’re living this incredibly juicy, pleasurable, amazing life.”
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Maybe, he adds, sober musicians should be writing more songs about that.
“There should be like, songs about having sex sober. There should be songs about ‘… and then I had all my money when I woke up in the morning ’cause I didn’t spend it.’ And complete gratitude.”
There is one sober song Sasha Frere-Jones especially wishes he could hear — the one Elliott Smith did not live long enough to write, about how good it feels to be sober and alive.
Edited for the radio and web by Rose Friedman, produced for the web by Beth Novey.
“She’s like a female Willy Wonka,” Sakief Baron, 36, said about Kendra Austin, 32, after she explained that her personal style had a playful and cartoonish spirit.
Dressed in loose, oversize layers in blue and neutral shades, the couple were walking on the Upper East Side of Manhattan when I noticed them on a Saturday in April. There was a symmetry to their ensembles, so it wasn’t too surprising when she noted that he had influenced her fashion sense.
Before they met, she said, she was “less sure” about her wardrobe choices. “I also have lost 100 pounds in the time we’ve been together,” she added, which she said had helped her to recalibrate her relationship with clothes.
His style has been influenced by hip-hop culture, basketball players like Allen Iverson and his mother’s Finnish background. “I just take all these pieces and then it kind of comes together,” he said.
Both described themselves as multidisciplinary artists; he also has a job at a youth center, mentoring children. “I want to make sure that I look like someone they want to aspire to be every time they see me,” he said.
In my L.A. Buy Nothing group, I started noticing how some objects, given for free from neighbor to neighbor, carry emotional weight. An item was more than it appeared. It was a piece of personal history, perhaps one with generational memories.
From one person’s hands to another’s, objects find new life through the free gift economy on Facebook or the Buy Nothing app. Buy Nothing Project, a public benefit corporation, reports having 14 million members across more than 50 countries who give away 2.6 million items a month. There are more than 100 groups in Los Angeles alone.
Buy Nothing reduces waste by keeping items out of landfills. It also builds community. When our lives are increasingly online, Buy Nothing encourages us to get out of our cars and make connections with neighbors, even if the interaction is no more than a wave when picking something up left by a doorstep. Researchers have found that even small social interactions can foster a sense of belonging.
Still, Buy Nothing has its challenges. For years, some have complained that the groups shouldn’t be limited to neighborhoods, but rather have more open borders. Last year, many longtime members complained about the project enforcing its trademark, leading Facebook to shut down unregistered groups even if they were serving people under economic strain. Critics saw the tattling as a shift from mutual aid toward control and branding. For its part, Buy Nothing says its decisions are based on building community, trust and safety.
Despite those disagreements, Buy Nothing offers a platform for special connections. As much as there are jokes about people offering half-eaten cake, many have passed along treasured items. Buy Nothing items may feel too valuable for the trash or too personal for Goodwill. The interaction between giver and receiver becomes just as meaningful as the object itself.
I set out to document these quiet exchanges in my Buy Nothing group, drawn to the question of why people choose to pass their belongings from one neighbor to another.
Tiny builders, big exchange
Lidia Butcher gives a toolbox and worktable her two sons used to Chelsea Ward for her 17-month-old son.
“We’ve had the toolbox and worktable for the last 10 years, it’s been very special. When I told my youngest son we were going to give it away, he was a little sad. He said he was still playing with it, but then I explained that it’s been sitting untouched for a year and that if we gave it to someone else, maybe someone else would be happy about it. So he felt joy about giving it to another child who would want to play with it. I have this little emotional feeling letting it go, but at the same time, it’s a good feeling. Like a new beginning.”
— Lidia Butcher, 35, joined the group several years ago when someone told her a person in the group once asked for a cup of sugar.
“We’re getting a worktable. Benji is now old enough to be interested in playing with tools. I’m going to move my drafting table out of his room. His bedroom is my office. So that will go into storage or the Buy Nothing group and the worktable will go in its place. We live in an apartment, and as he’s growing, his needs change but our space doesn’t. Buy Nothing is really helpful to be able to cycle out of stuff.”
— Chelsea Ward, 38, has found the Buy Nothing group extremely helpful since becoming a mom.
Something borrowed
Abby Rodriguez lends Sophie Janinet a veil for her wedding.
“Sophie had asked for a wedding veil on our Buy Nothing group and I’m lending it to her because I wanted it to have a second life. I hate the idea that precious things just sit there and never get touched. My wedding day was one of the best days of my life. At one point the power went out and now we have this amazing picture with my husband and I and everyone using their phone to light up the dance floor.”
— Abby Rodriguez, 40, discovered Buy Nothing when she moved to her northeast L.A. neighborhood in 2020.
“I moved to Los Angeles from France four years ago. The day I joined Buy Nothing was the first time I felt connected to the community. It played a huge role in my adapting to life here. I’m receiving a veil because I want my wedding to look and feel like my values. I thrifted my dress, I chose a local seamstress to alter the dress but when I tried it on, I felt something was missing. I wanted a veil but I didn’t want to buy new because I didn’t want to add anything to the landfill. So I posted a request for the veil on Buy Nothing.”
— Sophie Janinet, 37, is recreating the low-waste, slower-paced values she once lived by in France through her local Buy Nothing community.
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1. Abby Rodriguez, left, holds her wedding veil that she is lending Sophie Janinet, right, for her upcoming wedding. 2. Michele Sawers, left stands with Beth Penn, right, while giving her a decorative owl.
A pigeon-spooking owl gets a second life
Michele Sawers gives Beth Penn a decorative owl.
“Coming from a place of luck, now I have plenty to give. The owl has been with me for 26 years. I bought the owl soon after I bought this house. The owl was purchased because I had a pigeon problem, they would camp out under my eves and I would have bird poop everywhere. The owl must have worked because they’re gone and they haven’t come back.”
— Michele Sawers, 58, uses Buy Nothing regularly to connect with her community and support her low-consumption values.
“There are things I don’t want to own. So borrowing those things on Buy Nothing is really nice. There is a person who I borrowed their cooler twice and their ladder twice so I feel like they are my neighbor even though they are not [right next door]. We get these birds that poop on the deck and the recommendation online was to get a fake owl. When it was posted on Buy Nothing, I thought, ‘I have to have that owl!’ It’s going to have a good home with me on the deck with some cats, a dog and some kids.”
— Beth Penn, 47, once helped build her local Buy Nothing group and now experiences it from the other side, as a member.
Stuffed toys find a new purpose
Magaly Leyva, left, stands with Tatiana Lonny, right, with the stuffed toys and play balls she is gifting her.
(Dania Maxwell/For The Times)
Magaly Leyva gives stuffed toys and plastic play balls to Tatiana Lonny.
“My mother-in-law gave the dolls and plastic play balls to my daughter, but she has so much. My daughter is not going to play with them with the same intent that another kid would, because she’s really little. I’d rather another kid use these things.”
— Magaly Leyva, 35, joined Buy Nothing nearly four years ago to find clothes for her nephew.
“I’m taking these new items to a township called Langa in South Africa. I know the kids there will be so happy. They have so little there. I’m doing this all by myself, I’m just collecting a GoFundMe for the suitcase fee at the airport.”
— Tatiana Lonny, 51, began using Buy Nothing in hopes of finding resources to support the animals she rescues.
A second helping
Laura Cherkas gives Aurora Sanchez a cast iron pan.
“Buy Nothing gives me the freedom to let go of things because I know that they will stay in the community and the neighborhood. I’m giving a couple of cast iron items that my husband and I got when we were on a cast iron kick, probably during COVID. We determined that we don’t actually use these particular pans and they were just making our drawers heavy. So we decided to let someone else get some use out of them.
“I hate throwing things away. I want to see things have another life. Sometimes I take things to a donation center, but I like the personal connection with Buy Nothing and that you know that there is someone who definitely wants your item.”
— Laura Cherkas, 40, has built connections with other moms through Buy Nothing and values it as a way to cycle toys in and out for her child.
Laura Cherkas, left, holds the pan she is gifting Aurora Sanchez, right, through Buy Nothing.
(Dania Maxwell/For The Times)
“I wanted a cast iron pan because I cook a lot of grilled meat. I’m excited to try this style of cooking out and it will help me when I cook for only one or two people. I got lucky because I was chosen to receive it.”
— Aurora Sanchez, 54, has spent the past two years engaging with Buy Nothing, finding in it a sense of neighborly support that makes her feel valued while strengthening her connection to the community.
Next player up
Joe Zeni, 70, is using his local Buy Nothing group on Facebook to give away a basketball hoop he used with his son when he was little.
(Dania Maxwell/For The Times)
Joe Zeni first offered a basketball hoop on Buy Nothing in 2023, where it remains unclaimed.
“I’m giving away a Huffy basketball freestanding hoop because it’s just taking up space. We used to play horse and shoot baskets together. My son is now 35, he doesn’t live here anymore.”
— Joe Zeni, 70, uses Buy Nothing often to give items away, believing many of the things he no longer needs still have purpose.
In the year since his death, there has been no hard pivot at Armani. The shadow of the founder has stayed in place over the Milan HQ, where the brand seems happy to leave it. Armani is not just plumbing the past for continued inspiration, it’s reselling it.
Today, Giorgio Armani is announcing Archivio, a grouping of 13 men’s and women’s looks, plucked from the brand’s back catalog and remade for today. (And, yes, at today’s prices.) There’s a jacket in pinstriped alpaca of 1979 vintage; a buttery one-and-a-half breasted jacket with a maitre d’s flair that first appeared in 1987; and an unstructured silk-linen suit that will activate ’90s flashbacks for die-hard Armani clients and those who want to capture that era’s nostalgia. The advertising campaign was shot and styled by Eli Russell Linnetz, who has his own label, ERL, but always seems to be the first call brands make when they want sultry photos with the aura of Details magazine circa 1995. (He did a similar thing for Guess recently.)
Linnetz’s images are a reminder of how Armani’s work still reverberates decades later.
Archivio is also a canny recognition of what shoppers crave now. On the resale market, Armani wares are as coveted as can be. Every week it seems as if I get an email from Ndwc0, a British vintage store, announcing a new drop of meaty-shouldered ’90s Armani power suits. They sell for less than $500. At Sorbara’s in Brooklyn, you can buy a tan Giorgio Armani vest for $225.
That vintage-mad audience is in Armani’s sights: To introduce the collection, it’s staging an installation, opening today, at Giorgio Armani’s Milan boutique. It will feature the hosts of “Throwing Fits,” a New York-based podcast whose hosts wear vintage Armani button-ups and shout out stores like Sorbara’s.
It’s prudent, if a bit disconnected. Part of the charm of old Armani is that it can be found on the cheap. I’m wearing a pair of vintage Giorgio Armani corduroys as I write this. I bought them for $76 on eBay. Archivio is reverent, but its prices, which range from $1,025 to $12,000, may scare off shoppers willing to do the searching themselves.
If you ask me, the next frontier of this archive fixation is that a brand — and a big one — will release a mountain of genuine vintage pieces. J. Crew and Banana Republic have tried this at a small scale, but a luxury house like Armani hasn’t gone there. Yet. Eventually, Armani (or a brand like it) is going to grab hold of the market that exists around its brand, but through which it gets no cut.
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