1970 Rock Anthem Became One of the 'Top Drinking Songs of All Time' Despite Never Reaching No. 1
While the best drinking songs don't have to actually be about drinking, it helps if there's at least some kind of reference to alcohol in the lyrics. Not only does Eric Burdon & War's classic "Spill the Wine" mention booze right there in the title, but the lyrics are the kind that only start to make sense after you've had a few glasses of something.
Released in 1970, "Spill the Wine" was War's first Billboard hit, peaking at #3 on the Hot 100 on August 22 of that year, and ended up being their biggest success ever. As the name implies, the tune was actually inspired by a glass of wine that spilled onto a console in the recording studio.
'The way I remember it, most of the band had taken a lunch break and I was lying on my back having a five minute nap in the studio," Burdon recalled in a 2008 interview with Get Ready to Rock.
"The producer Jerry Goldstein more or less put a mic down my throat and I started singing while Lonnie [Jordan] put a backing track down on keyboards," Burdon continued. "I think the rest was overdubbed later on."
As for what Burdon is singing about, that's a question fans have wondered about for decades. The song seems to be about somebody falling asleep in a field and dreaming about an "overfed, long-haired leaping gnome," being taken to the "hall of a Mountain king" and encouraged by a mysterious "lady" to "spill the wine, take that pearl." Throughout the tune, a woman can be heard speaking Spanish in the background.
"I guess it was my homage to Mexico (maybe Mexican women) and the feeling I got when I was there," Burdon said. "It was Old World Mexico, nothing to do with the Americanized version now."
'Spill the Wine' was originally meant to be a B-side
"The funny thing was that it was originally going to be the B-side to a song called ‘Magic Mountain,'" Burdon explained. "That song was basically about a Californian mountain called Mount Tamalpais, and back in the hippie days we all used to go up there and hang out. But the DJs wouldn't play the song because they wrongly assumed the lyrics were all about sex and drugs. So as a consequence ‘Spill the Wine' became the song that they played."
As it turned out, "Spill the Wine" might have been the best choice for a single anyway. Years later, Burdon still seemed amazed by the song's popularity.
'I was very surprised not only at the original success, but especially after the way it came about and also the fact that it continues to be played now and is still in people's minds," Burdon said, noting, "'Spill the Wine' still appears in film soundtracks and pops up everywhere."
Indeed. Not only has "Spill the Wine" been featured prominently in movies and TV shows like Boogie Nights, Dexter and Shameless, it's become a go-to for inebriated singalongs the world over. "Spill the Wine" was ranked at #27 on Billboard's list of "100 Best Drinking Songs of All Time," which called the track a "woozy story [that] wraps with wine bottles emptied and figurative pearls taken."
Where were those pearls taken, and who took them? Was it a long-haired gnome? We may never know.
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This story was originally published May 19, 2026 at 7:53 PM.