Songs About Cigars: Stogies in Popular Music

Here at the BestCigarPrices offices, we can all agree on two passions: cigars and music. Since we set up shop, music has been playing somewhere in the building at all times. As a company, we progressively believe in whistling while you work. Each department is like its own radio station. Shipping features hard rock, fulfillment plays quirky pop and in my department, marketing, we have a very eclectic mix.

Though extremely rare, the twain do meet sometimes with a handful of great cigar-themed songs. We compiled a short playlist for whenever you feel like singing along and smoking along. (We use GrooveShark.com to stream whatever we want, freely and legally.) There are many songs that mention cigars, but very few that are specifically about cigars. In fact, we could only find three:

Brad Paisley – “The Cigar Song”
The most cigar-centric song out there is a classic track from country singer/songwriter Brad Paisley. The West Virginia native penned this tune from his Mud on the Tires album as an ode to a popular urban myth about cigars. A man buys a box of cigars, insures them against fire, smokes every last one and files an insurance claim. After a judge rules the insurance company must pay the claim, the company turns around and sues him for arson. It’s a fun, lighthearted country ballad that pairs perfectly with any smoke.

Pink Floyd – “Have a Cigar”
Pretty much everyone knows this one. A staple of classic rock radio, Pink Floyd’s 1975 cut off of Wish You Were Here is a scathing indictment of the ‘fat cat’ cigar stereotype. Specifically, it criticizes the shady and ethically compromised music business which many a band battled with over the years. Now that the record industry has pretty much collapsed, that’s less of a concern, but this song still rings true 35 years later. In terms of sheer musical quality, this is our favorite on the list. For modern rock fans, check out great covers of this song by Foo Fighters and Primus.

Jethro Tull – “A Small Cigar”
Along the same lines of “Have a Cigar”, Tull’s previously unreleased track about high-society smoking tells the story of how “a small cigar can change the world”. It’s may be on the sappy, melodramatic side of the sonic spectrum, but it manages to exude a certain level of bourgeoisie decadence while being critical of “upper-middle-class oblivion”. Spoiler alert: In the end, Tull claims to have changed the world by giving a drunk newspaper salesman a ten-pack of cigarillos.