Remedy by The Black Crowes

Album: The Southern Harmony and Musical Companion (1992)

Charted: 24 48

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In our interview with Black Crowes lyricist/frontman Chris Robinson, he explained: "'Remedy' is a song that essentially is about freedom. We were into the whole idea that the 'war on drugs' was just silly - it was this asinine concept to me and millions of other people. So that song to me is about freedom, plain and simple, just put in a Rock & Roll framework."
A track from the second Black Crowes album, this was their last song to make the Hot 100 - a surprising development considering they charted three songs from their first album and had a lot of radio support. As the band moved forward, the focused more on their core fanbase (the "connoisseurs" as Chris Robinson calls them), which circumscribed their popular fortunes.
The pro-marijuana stance the band espouses in this song is something they played up around this time. To help promote the album, they appeared on the cover of High Times magazine, played the Atlanta Pot Festival, and had signage at their concerts with marijuana leaves.

Comments: 2

Davie Crockett from Over The Hills And Far AwayJust a great song, I'd love to know if Chris wrote the lyrics to the music, or just wrote them and fit them after. They fit perfectly and I love the flair his brother plays with in this, like someone fused Jimmy Page, Keith Richards and Joe Perry into one guitarist, or well, two in the Black Crowed case.

I think this song is about more about what drives one to use drugs than drugs themselves. We get overwhelmed with more emotional turmoil in our lives than our brain can handle, so we seek a quick fix, or a Remedy, in the form of substances. Pro freedom of choice, whether we want to suffer the direct pain, or numb ourselves with a remedy and cope with it later. But in the end, the lesson learned is, remedies are only temporary we need to fix the problem for a real cure.
Scott from Kutztown, PaQuestion. Who are the female background singers on the Black Crowes music video "Remedy?"

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