Tequila Songs

Just heard a song from Dan + Shay called 'Tequila.' Wow, a song about tequila. How novel!

While that oozes sarcasm, it’s a decent song, and so adds to an every-growing list of odes to a cactus.

Off the top of my head, I can probably name 9 or 10 songs about tequila. There are more, I know. Many more.

Almost all songs about tequila involve drinking too much. From there, we work on secondary themes, like being lonesome, drinking away a memory or doing something stupid.

Tequila songs can also involve a fair amount of promiscuity.

"Who is this cowboy
Who's sleepin' beside me?
He's awful cute, but how'd I
Get his shirt on?
I had to much Tequila last night."
  - 'Jose Cuervo,' sung by Shelly West

Anyway…

Hello, everybody, and welcome to TEQUILA TALK. As your host, you should know I fancy myself a tequila aficionado (I drink it), a tequila snob (I like the good stuff), and I may be the only person you’ve ever met that has never gotten sick from drinking it. Like, ever.

Full disclosure: Oh yeah, I’ve overdone it. I’ve just never overdone it on tequila. And I’ll let my sainthood stop right there.

Tequila gets a bad rap, and it’s not to blame. Its smooth, sometimes smoky goodness is a delicious sip, either neat or over a little ice.

There are two main problems we have with tequila.

First, we’ve made it a barroom game to see how much of it we can drink before we puke. Secondly, and a contributor to the first point, barroom tequila shots are usually done with a low-grade product.

While anything calling itself tequila must, by law, contain at least 51% distilled blue agave, that leaves the other 49% to be distilled from something else. That’s very often corn syrup. And in these cheaper tequilas that nice golden color comes not from barrel aging, it comes from caramel coloring.

I'm not hating on Cuervo Gold, y'all. Despite it being made from a whole lot of sugar and only minimally-required blue agave, it doesn't taste bad. But even folks who think it does taste bad are willing to toss a few down so we can part-a-a-a-y!!!

I’ll be worshiping at the porcelain alter later, but right now I have never been funnier, prettier, wittier or danced better!

The girl who cuts my hair told me she can’t drink tequila. And why?

“Well, one night…”

…and we all know the rest of that story.

Her drink of choice is vodka.

Have you ever, I asked, sat down with some friends and slammed shots of cheap vodka down your throat until you went blind?

Still, it's hard to deny tequila has rendered some fun tunes. An all-time favorite became Pee Wee Herman's dance groove: 'Tequila' by The Champs. In fact, that one may be the top tequila song of all time because of Pee Wee's signature dance – let's face it, tequila can lead to some pretty stupid dance moves – and because it's easy to sing. The lyrical content of the song is a total of three words, and they are all 'tequila!'

Speaking of lyrical content, Joe Nichols had a #1 hit with 'Tequila Makes Her Clothes Fall Off.' Given its title, I'm not sure why it needed any lyrics. Seems fairly self-explanatory.