The Drugs Don’t Work | Chords + Lyrics
Intro
| C Csus2 | C Csus2 | Am Asus2 | Am Asus2 |
| Em | Fadd9 G | C Csus2 | C Csus2 |
Verse 1
| C Csus2 | C G/B | Am Asus2 | Am Asus2 |
All this talk of getting old, it’s getting me down my love.
| Em | F/C G | C Csus2 | C Csus2 |
Like a cat in a bag, waiting to drown, this time I’m comin’ down.
Verse 2
And I hope you’re thinking of me, as you lay down on your side.
Now the drugs don’t work, they just make you worse, but I know I’ll see your face again.
Chorus 1
| Em | Fsus2 G | C Csus2 | C Csus2 |
Now the drugs don’t work, they just make you worse, but I know I’ll see your face again.
Verse 3
But I know I’m on a losing streak, ’cause I passed down my old street.
And if you wanna show, then just let me know, and I’ll sing in your ear again.
Chorus 2
Now the drugs don’t work, they just make you worse, but I know I’ll see your face again.
Bridge 1
| F | Em | Am | G |
Cause baby, ooh, if heaven calls, I’m coming too.
| F/C | Em | Am | G |
Just like you said, you leave my life, I’m better off dead.
Verse 4
All this talk of getting old, it’s getting me down my love.
Like a cat in a bag, waiting to drown, this time I’m comin’ down.
Chorus 3
Now the drugs don’t work, they just make you worse, but I know I’ll see your face again.
Bridge 2
‘Cause baby, ooh, if heaven calls, I’m coming, too.
Just like you said, you leave my life, I’m better off dead.
Chorus 4
| Em | F/C G | C Csus2 | C Csus2 |
But if you wanna show, just let me know, and I’ll sing in your ear again.
| Em | F/C G | C Csus2 | C |
Now the drugs don’t work, they just make you worse, but I know I’ll see your face again.
Outro
||: C Csus2 :||
||: Yeah, I know I’ll see your face again :||
||: Yeah, I know I’ll see your face again, oh Lord :||
||: I’m never going down, I’m never coming down, no more, no more, no more, no more, no more :||
The Drugs Don’t Work Chords: Learn the progressions
Using almost only open-position chords, staying in the key of C with no chords going outside, Richard Ashcroft has managed to write a song that sounds unique.
If you are a beginner, The Drugs Don’t Work’s chords only have one difficult chord to fret, the mighty F.
You don’t have to play this as a big and painful barre chord, instead, it’s about finding a way to play that F and look beyond the seemingly impossible shape.
Most of the time, we get there by not fretting and playing all the strings. For example, an F/C will work well enough as a substitute for the big and clunky F (members get video lessons going through this in great detail).
In order to understand The Drugs Don’t Work’s chord progressions, we must look at them using Roman Numerals. Here are the intro, verse, and chorus chords:
| C (I) | C | Am (VI) | Am |
| Em (III) | F (IV) G (V) | C (I) | C |
These simple chords are manipulated using extensions such as sus2 and add9. I demonstrate exactly how in the course and then give you a loop with rhythm slashes to play along with for each section.
Once you can play The Drugs Don’t Work, a simple chart is a good reminder, here’s one I made for you.
The Drugs Don’t Work Chord Chart | PDF + iReal Pro
If you compare the chords in this chart to the chords and lyrics above, you’ll notice how I have simplified it somewhat.
For example, the way the F chord is varied between F, F/C, Fsus2, and Fadd9 isn’t perfectly explained in the chart.
The reason for this is that a chart needs to be easy to read and mainly serves as a reminder.
Should you want to download this chart, here’s a PDF: The Drugs Don’t Work Chord Chart PDF.
This chord chart was created using iReal Pro, here’s a link to that file: The Drugs Don’t Work iReal Pro. Using this and the iRealPro app, you can change the key.
In the course, we go deep into what to play for every single bar using a complex, note-for-note transcription of both the main guitar and the 2nd guitar. I even modified some parts because we don’t have a full band.
Below, you find a preview of this.
The Drugs Don’t Work Strumming | Course Preview
During the Beginner Acoustic Course, we practise The Drugs Don’t Work in great depth using strumming notation rather than TAB.
This is a fantastic reading exercise, try it already now using the loop above.
Here are the rhythm slashes for the first verse, or as I call it in the course, example 1.
After doing this to all sections in little chunks like this, we play the complete song with a singer (see the first video at the top of this page).
Lastly, we learn the beautiful 2nd guitar as well, just like the original using strumming notation and play-along loops. Learning this means that you, me, and the singer can play The Drugs Don’t Work together, like a trio.
Here’s a link to the 8 step-by-step guitar lessons: The Drugs Don’t Work – Guitar Lessons with TAB.
The Drugs Don’t Work is not about illegal drugs!
The Drugs Don’t Work has had a massive reach globally. Partly helped by Ben Harper who covered it on his Live From Mars album in 2001, but mainly as a single from The Verve’s best-seller Urban Hymns (1997).
As the title indicates, most of us would have thought this was an anti-drug song, which it is, but not in the way we may have all been led to believe.
Originally having the meaning that the drugs didn’t work for Richard Ashcroft’s father, who was dying of cancer, the song had its wording slightly tweaked in order to give off a more ambiguous statement.
Being one of three massive hits (including Bitter Sweet Symphony and Lucky Man), The Verve crossed over from a critically acclaimed but relatively unknown indie/rock band to mass-market fame in 1998.
Interestingly enough, the band had actually split up prior to the making of Urban Hymns which was their third record.
Luckily, Ashcroft managed to recruit an old friend in Simon Tong and eventually lure guitarist Nick McCabe back into the studio and get the album finished.
It’s Nick who wrote and played that amazing 2nd guitar. It took me several days to transcribe it, you can hear/see me play it in the second video of the playlist at the top of the page.
In the course, you’ll end up playing the 2nd guitar with me and the singer, it won’t be easy but you will learn so much from doing it.
The Drugs Don’t Work Chords | Related Pages
The Drugs Don’t Work | 8 Step-by-step Guitar Lessons + TAB
Playing The Drugs Don’t Work just like Richard did is not easy, there is so much variation in the strumming. To get it right, we first work on reading rhythms.
Following this, we study each section in depth using play-along loops before we play the complete song. Finally, we learn the beautiful 2nd guitar as well.
Five similar tunes | Chords + Lyrics
Ben Harper tunes
Ben Harper is an American roots musician who stretched his appeal around the globe by recording covers of Sexual Healing and The Drugs Don’t Work.
Harper’s first album, Welcome To The Cruel World (94), was followed by Fight For Your Mind only a year later.
Ben Harper on the web
The Verve tunes
The Verve is a British rock band formed in 1989, in Wigan. Among their bigger hits, you’ll find Bitter Sweet Symphony and The Drugs Don’t Work.
Since their first debut album, A Storm In Heaven, critics have always favoured The Verve as one of the best 90s British rock acts.
The Verve on the web
About me | Dan Lundholm
This was a guitar lesson about The Drugs Don’t Work’s chords, by Dan Lundholm. Discover more about him and how you can learn guitar with Spytunes.
Most importantly, find out why you should learn guitar through playing tunes, not practising scales, and studying theory in isolation.
