Eric Clapton - Cocaine - Live 2016

"Cocaine" is a song written and recorded in 1976 by singer-songwriter J. J. Cale. The song was popularized by Eric Clapton after his cover version was released on the 1977 album Slowhand. J. J. Cale's version of "Cocaine" was a number one hit in New Zealand for a single week and became the seventh best-selling single of 1977.

Clapton described "Cocaine" as an anti-drug song intended to warn listeners about its addictiveness and deadliness. He called the song "quite cleverly anti-cocaine", noting:

It's no good to write a deliberate anti-drug song and hope that it will catch. Because the general thing is that people will be upset by that. It would disturb them to have someone else shoving something down their throat. So the best thing to do is offer something that seems ambiguous—that on study or on reflection actually can be seen to be "anti"—which the song "Cocaine" is actually an anti-cocaine song. If you study it or look at it with a little bit of thought ... from a distance ... or as it goes by ... it just sounds like a song about cocaine. But actually, it is quite cleverly anti-cocaine.

Because of its ambiguous message, Clapton did not perform the song in many of his concerts; over the years, he has added the lyrics 'that dirty cocaine' in live shows to underline the anti-drug message of the song.

Lyrics

If you wanna hang out you've got to take her out

Cocaine

If you wanna get down, down on the ground

Cocaine

She don't lie, she don't lie, she don't lie

Cocaine

If you got bad news, you wanna kick them blues

Cocaine

When your day is done and you wanna run

Cocaine

She don't lie, she don't lie, she don't lie

Cocaine

If your day is gone and you wanna ride on

Cocaine

Don't forget this fact, you can't get it back

Cocaine

She don't lie, she don't lie, she don't lie

Cocaine

She don't lie, she don't lie, she don't lie

Cocaine