#111, "Borracho," Mark Lanegan (1994)

150 Favorite Songs: #111, "Borracho," Mark Lanegan (1994)

There aren't a lot of rock singers from Mark Lanegan's generation who can play the part he plays on "Borracho" that convincingly. This is a song about addiction, obviously, but it's not the parts that Kurt Cobain or Layne Staley sang about. Their songs on the subject were mostly about the pain that leads to the addiction, but Lanegan's song isn't concerned with that. This isn't about addiction as a means to escape—it’s about addiction as a demon.

I mean that literally. “Here comes the devil prowling around,” he repeats, shouting at the ghosts he shares the bottle with, and in most other voices, it would sound forced, and at least a little bit phony. But Lanegan's voice is so weary, so busted, that I buy it. I always thought that Kurt Cobain sounded cool in his songs, but Lanegan sounds like your fucked up uncle. Which isn't to say he's not compelling here—when he hits that chorus, and that gravelly baritone sounds like it could be containing tears ("I'm sorry for what I've done / cuz it's me who knows what it costs"), it's an exceptional performance. In fact, that's what makes "Borracho" work for me. He’s a storyteller here, but rather than focus too much on the narrative of the lyrics, it's the narrative of his voice. It opens at the start of the day, and he's in control, and as it goes on —well, jesus. It's not going well. He falls apart through the chorus, and then gives up, twisting that chorus from the price he paid for the things he's done to the fact that, after all's said—“I just don't care anymore." Then it repeats itself, building in intensity, By the end, he's shouting at the ghosts and the devil.

I mean, what the fuck? Most narrative songs are pretty conventional, telling their story through the words. Lanegan, who knew how to use his instruments to a different effect, doesn't use words to do much more than set the mood. His performance here is at least acting as it is singing, and putting that much emotional weight into a performance is impossibly powerful to me. It’s especially something to hear if you know much about Lanegan’s actual life—around the time he recorded “Borracho,” he was less a rock star who did drugs and more of a drug dealer who was also in a band—and he puts that in every line of the song. I expect that it was cathartic, to put that shame into a song, so everyone would know. Maybe he thought it would help him keep clean. It didn’t. (Courtney Love, who posted Lanegan’s photo behind the counter at every pawn shop in Seattle so she could find him when he was at his lowest, and who paid for a year of rehab, plus his rent while he was getting clean, did that.) But the fact that he sings about it in a way that makes you feel it, instead of just hear it, serves as a warning to anyone who might romanticize it anyway.