10 Songs About Coffee

Need a midday boost? Fill your cup with these ten songs about Coffee.

10. Descendents – “Coffee Mug”
Who needs caffeine when you’ve got California punk? This 30-second song will wake you up just fine all by itself.

09. Abigail Washburn – “Coffee’s Cold” 
Cold coffee adds insult to injury on this (rather catchy) lament from the banjo-wielding Washburn’s excellent Appalachia-meets-China album Song of the Traveling Daughter.

08. Gordon Lightfoot – “Second Cup of Coffee” 
A seriously underrated songwriter, Lightfoot paints quite the depressing picture here as he sings “I’m on my second cup of coffee and I still can’t face the dawn…And if I don’t stop this trembling hand from reaching for the phone/I’ll be reaching for the bottle, Lord, before this day is done.”

07. Bob [Robert] Marley – “One Cup of Coffee”
This was one of Marley’s first singles, recorded in the early ’60s. More ska than reggae, it’s a must-listen for anyone who only knows Marley through frathouse staple Legend

06. Squeeze – “Black Coffee in Bed”
All that’s left of a relationship are memories and a coffee stain on a notebook. Trust us, the song is peppier than the above summary makes it sound.

05. Otis Redding – “Cigarettes and Coffee” 
Love is finding someone you can sip, smoke, and talk with at 3:00 AM. Redding singing “I don’t want no cream and sugar/’Cause I got you now, darlin’,” beats any Hallmark card or shiny bauble in existence

04. Lefty Frizzell – “Cigarettes and Coffee Blues”
For Frizzell, caffeine and nicotine are the vices that get him through another night of heartbreak, wondering “how a love so right could suddenly go wrong.” If you want a woman’s perspective on the song, check out Jean Shepard’s excellent cover.

03. Tom T. Hall – “Don’t Forget the Coffee, Billy Joe”
Poverty, illness, blizzards…everything becomes a little easier to deal with when you’ve got a cuppa joe in your hands.

02. Bob Dylan – “One More Cup of Coffee”
This classic comes from Dylan’s Desire. As with just about every Dylan song ever, several decent covers can be found by The White Stripes, Mark Pickerel, Frazey Ford (The Be Good Tanyas) and more.

01. Sarah Vaughan – “Black Coffee”
Warm, full-bodied, and comforting, Vaughan’s voice is the best brew of them all.