Acid refers to either one of two things in music; it can represent literal acid and sizzling, bitter disintegration, or LSD-fuelled psychedelia.
We’re skipping over some of the most famous songs about acid, such as The Beatles’ Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds, showcasing only the hidden gems of this quirky musical concept.
Songs About Acid
1. Darko – Acid Inject
Darko’s 2022 release, Acid Inject, is a brutally merciless and claustrophobic death metal track.
Clad with white-noise distortions and plagues of searing synth-like guitars, every plush layer thickens the piece’s wild and stylistically sickening disorientation, blocking out true reality with its morbid, trance-like effect.
Acid Inject’s soundscape is contagiously intense and destructive, effortlessly reflecting the sensation of a literal acid injection eroding your innards from vein to skin, whilst also conjuring a psychotic, psychedelic hell from which there’s no escape.
2. BLiSS – My LSD Song
BLiSS’s 2017 track My LSD Song is a phosphoric club anthem absorbing vibrant inspiration from a dazzling array of genres. Heavy metal and classic rock riffs are interwoven into its unsuspecting spiritual intro, before its anchoring dance vibe emerges like a lightning storm from the horizon.
Jewelled with flairs of dubstep and pixelated video game synths, it’s almost as if every sonic element itself is tripping, altering dynamically, swelling and ceasing in intensity.
This BLiSS track makes sense of nonsense, throwing together a mix-match of artistic qualities and animating them masterfully.
Their ever-evolving landscape of unpredictable sound summons every up and down of a psychedelic adventure, forming a mesmerising illustration of contemporary club-style psychedelia.
3. Kasabian – Bless This Acid House
Indie rock band Kasabian put a young-hearted pop-punk spin on their 2017 single, Bless This Acid House.
This intoxicatingly upbeat track is about escaping your day to day misery on a weekend bender, anchoring its radiant youthful energy in the lines; “I get high for just one minute, I take my life and jump right in it, I see my friends in all our numbers, rip up my plans, nothing matters.”
Bless This Acid House is backlit by a theme of escaping from the pallid misery of the weekdays and into the vast otherworld; “Still life, just waiting for the weekend, this town is easy to forget, don’t take the world upon your shoulders, gotta get on home, she said: ‘God bless this acid house.’”
4. Loudon Wainwright III – Acid Song
Loudon Wainwright III’s acoustic track Acid Song is a country-style storytelling song.
Wainwright embellishes his piece with an array of weirdly evocative, drug-laced lyrics reflecting the sheer dissociation of LSD, our favourite being; “I know my hair’s on fire, it’s like incense or something, you know, your face is melting, it is, it’s all the colours of the rainbow.”
Against a retro hippie-style soundscape, this track follows the story of life-long friends taking acid again for the first time in years, comically detailing the swelling of the senses and the hypnotised recklessness of an hallucinatory haze;
“Driving on acid is easy, driving on acid’s a breeze, just keep the car on the highway, don’t laugh and don’t fart and don’t sneeze.”
5. Avenged Sevenfold – Acid Rain
Avenged Sevenfold’s Acid Rain is breathtakingly bluesy compared to their usual ultra-melodic metal style. Acid Rain is a powerfully emotive piece welcoming the destructive force of acid rain as a cleansing, like a rare chance for starting over as the world you know dissolves to toxic waste.
With lush guitar solos ribboning their symphonic, piano-based track, this morbid love song is laced with a prominent theme of appreciating life’s blessings while they last before the inevitable end.
Whilst gathering vast inspiration from the meteorological occurrence, A7X’s last verse hints at something profoundly spiritual, drawing the line between acidic corrosion and the divine journey of the soul on LSD; ==
“Life wouldn’t be so precious dear if there never was an end … Not even stars last forever, cleanse us, Acid Rain … Send us home, send us home, send us home…”
6. A$AP Rocky – L$D
A$AP Rocky’s 2015 dream-pop rap track, L$D, adorns its title acronym with a different significance than expected. Against a glistening soundscape, this track equates lust as a drug, comparing the psychedelic adoration for a woman’s magnetic beauty as you trip and fall in love with her.
Matching drug-induced highs with the majesty of love, L$D captures the trance-like nature of evening dates under the city lights, its refreshed symbolism planted in the line; “I get a feeling it’s a trippy night, them other drugs just don’t fit me right, girl I really f****** want Love, Sex, Dreams.”
7. Paolo Nutini – Acid Eyes
Paulo Nutini’s 2022 release Acid Eyes is based in a metaphor for lethal admiration. This atmospheric indie pop track contrasts its soft, alkaline soundscape with a bittersweet lyrical concept.
Anchored in the line, “I never told you, I loved you, when I looked into your acid eyes,” Paulo intersperses the hypnotic cyclicality of his choruses with a rainy illustration of heartache, waltzing the fine line between despair and beauty; “You did the damage when you walked in the room, you started whistling my favourite tune… It’s like you swallowed my heart.”
Paulo’s second verse leans into the optical illusion of blind love, striping his track with lucid psychedelic inspiration; “I looked into your acid eyes, into your acid eyes, and we were gone, up into outer space, my mind was on, I played guitar while you painted the romance.”
Acid Eyes is a track for anyone poisoned by the presence of their crush, swept hopelessly into the realms of some strange addiction to them.
8. Lil Wyte – Acid
Plastering rap upon an addictive old-school hip-hop beat, Lil Wyte’s Acid is a crisp and catchy track about drug-fuelled nights out. Strange sensory overloads are balanced with comical horror, every line crafted with a sublime aura of absurdity;
“Well I’ve been trippin’ for 10 hours on 3 hits of liquid microdot, gettin’ chased around the car by some midgets in the parking lot, feedin’ Doritos to a tree, a million spiders after me, I’m runnin’ around havin’ a fit, on myself I’m about to shit.”
Lil Wyte devises one of the most compelling tracks about acid on our list for its neglect of delving into the common dreamy LSD ambience, channelling the cut-throat energy of the city streets rather than nature’s wonder or cosy home trips.