In his recent TV documentary about Columbia’s drug trade, Alex James called cocaine a “relentless trail of death”, which funnily enough was pretty much the conclusion we reached the morning after the last Q Awards. What the ubiquitous cheese-loving fop failed to mention was that the perils of Bolivian monorail have always been a rich fund of inspiration for songwriters. Here are our Top 5 anti-krell songs.

Oasis – Gas Panic
“What tongueless ghost of sin crept through my curtains?” No, not a line from Edgar Allan Poe’s The Raven, it’s Noel Gallagher on uncharacteristically evocative lyrical form in this genuinely unsettling tale of coke-induced paranoia from Standing On The Shoulder Of Giants.

The Streets (featuring Pete Doherty) – Pranging Out
As if the clammy night-terror sketched out by Mike Skinner’s original wasn’t distressing enough, Pete Doherty’s gloomy guest verse ("Prang's a night that gets darker and darker”) makes cocaine sound about as much fun as being buried alive in a cement mixer.

Jackson Browne – Cocaine
Browne took Rev. Gary Davis’ much-covered standard, Cocaine Blues (check out Nick Drake’s seldom-heard version of the song), and gave it a desperately sad, dust-blown, Laurel Canyon vibe, adding the brilliantly conflicted final line: “Such a fine line, I hate to see it go.”

Public Enemy – Night Of The Living Baseheads
"Here it is - bam!/And you say Goddamn, this is a dope jam." Beyond that impossibly exhilarating intro, though, lay a grim elegy for an underclass poisoned and degraded by crack addiction.

Fleetwood Mac – Gold Dust Woman
Stevie Nicks’ rueful portrayal of a helpless addict digging her grave with a “silver spoon” became autobiographical only in retrospect; at the time she was still only an occasional cocaine user, still intoxicated by “the ritual of it, the little bottle, the fabulous velvet bags… never thinking in a million years it would overtake me.”