Raise a glass (responsibly) to our expertly mixed playlist of music about alcohol.

’Tis the season to be jolly every night of the week, so what better way to fill the hours between negronis than with MR PORTER’s festive collection of alco-pop anthems? We’ve got every taste covered on our playlist – lager, whisky, tequila, gin, piña coladas, champagne, pints of lean, shots of vodka, Hennessy, Courvoisier, Bacardi, wine... it’s all there, so choose your tipple and let the sozzled sounds soak in.

The starting point for this particular playlist was the realisation that, if there’s one thing that unites musicians, regardless of genre, age or sex, it’s their love of a boozy muse. In fact, drinking and singing have a rather more illustrious joint history than your typical pub karaoke night might suggest. Scroll down for a recap.

For the first half of the 20th century, it was jazz, country, and blues artists that were the most likely to be found pouring out their hearts via a river of liquor. Messrs Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash, Hank Williams and Mses Etta James, Billie Holiday, and Nina Simone perfected the art, and sold millions of records in the process (no doubt pushing their drinking habits onto manic new levels, too). Heartbreak was usually the cause of their loveable laments, with each singer memorably drinking to forget. How ironic. As Mr John Lee Hooker pleads with a bartender on “One Bourbon, One Scotch And One Beer”, his hit cover of Mr Amos Milburn’s 1953 jump-blues standard, “I want to get drunk, get her off of my mind”.

As the 1960s and 1970s progressed, the bar tab was passed on to rockers like Mr Eric Burdon, Lynyrd Skynyrd and The Doors, who thought nothing of substituting water for whiskey, whatever the time of day. The Eagles’ Mr Glenn Frey toasted sunrise with a tequila, Mr Mick Jagger moaned that he “can’t seem to drink her off my mind”, and in true hardcore style, the Dead Kennedys’ singer Mr Jello Biafra got too plastered to perform when it mattered... in the bedroom.

In the 1980s, the US’ drinking culture became mainstream entertainment thanks to Cheers, the TV show which launched the careers of Messrs Ted Danson, Kelsey Grammer, and Woody Harrelson, as well as one of the best theme songs of all time, by Mr Gary Portnoy. Business was booming, too, and city boys around the world could be found singing along to sleazy yacht rockers like Mr Rupert Holmes who boasted about whisking dates off to get drunk on piña coladas in remote sand dunes. Creepy.

With the dawn of the Britpop era brought a new generation of bands up for the craic, a sentiment captured most notably on Underworld’s “Born Slippy” and Oasis’s “Cigarettes & Alcohol”. And while the true meaning of “Champagne Supernova” is locked away in Noel Gallagher’s subconscious, a quick glance at Urban Dictionary says the title refers to a glass of bubbly with something slightly stronger than salt sprinkled around the rim. Charming.

Over the past 25 years, rappers and pop stars have taken rhythm ‘n’ booze into strange new places, from popping bottles of Bacardi, Patrón and Courvoisier in da club, to mixing up styrofoam cups of purple drank – a woozy combination of codeine-laced cough syrup, Sprite, Jolly Ranchers, and sometimes Hennessy. Beyoncé, RiRi and Tinashe regularly extol the virtues of getting “turnt”, while Snoop’s paean to rolling down the street sipping on a glass of gin and juice remains his biggest hit to date. Fellow LA rappers Tha Alkaholiks built their entire career around their drinking habits. In many ways, it’s amazing that they remembered to even actually record “Hip Hop Drunkies”, their classic collaboration with Wu-Tang legend Ol’ Dirty Bastard.

But hold on, bartender. In all of our excitement, we’ve neglected to mention the dark side of getting on it – and we’re not talking about hangovers. We’re talking about the big free bar in the sky. One of Mr Gil Scott-Heron’s greatest songs, “The Bottle”, weaves together three tales about alcohol abuse, the most tragic being the first verse about a scared little boy who watches his father pawn all their possessions to feed his addiction. DJ Screw, the pioneer of Houston’s chopped ‘n’ screwed sound, took his love of sipping sizzurp too far and died of a cardiac arrest from a codeine overdose in 2000. And lest we forget, booze has contributed to the downfall of some of music’s greatest icons – Ms Amy Winehouse, Ms Whitney Houston, Ms Billie Holiday, Mr Jimi Hendrix, Mr Hank Williams, Mr John Bonham, Mr Jim Morrison and Ms Janis Joplin are just a few of the musicians who have died of substance abuse. In short: please enjoy this playlist responsibly. As Mighty Casey sang on “Liquorland 2”, his The Cure-sampling underground track from 2003: “Liquorland is a real nice place, now you might want to visit but you don’t want to stay, ‘Cuz if you stay, you’ll never get away and you might wind up like me someday...”

Of course, this selection is just the tip of the ice cube – our long-list clocked in at over 200 tunes. We’d love to hear what your favourite drinking songs are, so do let us us know. Just don’t choose “Red Red Wine” by UB40. It may force us to get in a round to drink the pain away.