Which Cigarette Moms Actually Smoked?

Former. Nearly three packs of Kools a day until she quit on January 1, 1997.

The most thoroughly documented quit on the list. Nicks has said she was smoking close to three packs of Kool menthols a day, and that she quit on January 1, 1997, ahead of recording The Dance. Her own account of the night before: she smoked "about 500 cigarettes" and drank hard liquor on purpose so she would feel terrible enough to stop, then went on the patch.

Former. In her own words: "I stopped smoking around the age of 25."

Manson addressed it directly on her own Facebook page: "I stopped smoking around the age of 25. There is still barely a day that goes by without me wishing that smoking wasn’t bad for my already awful asthma and general health. Don’t start smoking kids. It will just break your heart." That puts the quit in the early 90s, before Garbage existed.

Longtime smoker. Reported at up to three packs a day; ordered by doctors to quit in 2020.

The most on-brand entry here. Love has been reported as a three-pack-a-day smoker for decades, was once banned from a flight for lighting up, and in 2020 was reportedly told by doctors to quit after nodules were found in her throat. Follow-up coverage described her as struggling to stay off them, including a switch to e-cigarettes. Whether she has fully quit since is not on the record.

Yes, and she has credited it with loosening up that voice.

Jett has been photographed with a cigarette for the better part of fifty years, and a 2018 Rolling Stone profile notes that smoking "loosens up the edges and range" of her famously craggy voice. No quit has been reported.

Widely reported to have quit after her 2006 cancer treatment; we could not find her saying it directly.

Crow has said that as a teenager she turned to music "when all my friends started drinking and smoking pot and I felt left out." Multiple profiles state that she gave up cigarettes after her 2006 breast cancer diagnosis and treatment, but we could not find a first-person quote confirming it, so treat the quit as reported rather than confirmed.

Yes. Rarely photographed without one.

Winehouse was a heavy smoker throughout her public life and was almost never photographed without a cigarette. In 2008 her father told the press that doctors had found early-stage emphysema and that her lungs had been damaged by cigarettes and crack cocaine. She was photographed lighting up again on leaving the hospital.

Yes. Started at 14; the cigarette is in half the photos.

Joplin is the patron saint of the cigarette-and-Southern-Comfort era. Biographies put her first cigarette at age 14, and the Getty archive is full of her posed with one. The predecessor tier of this canon is basically her.

Yes. A smoker throughout her life, per Irish press.

O’Riordan was a smoker for most of her adult life, something Irish coverage noted plainly over the years. We will leave it there; she deserves to be remembered for the voice on "Dreams" and "Linger," not the habit.

No public record either way. The searches come from her songs, not her habits.

This is the most-searched question on the whole list, and the honest answer is: there is no interview, statement, or reliable report of Michelle Branch smoking cigarettes. The question almost certainly exists because of her catalog. She released a song called "Sunset Cigarette" and, in 2023, "Smoke & Feathers." Song titles, not a habit.

No record of cigarettes. She has talked openly about cannabis, not tobacco.

Alanis has spoken openly about using cannabis for creativity and about pausing it while pregnant. On actual cigarettes, the only thing on the record is a lyric: "Ironic" namechecks "a no-smoking sign on your cigarette break." Nothing suggests a habit.

Photographed with cigarettes over the years; she has talked about quitting cocaine, not tobacco.

Apple has been photographed smoking, and the 2020 New Yorker profile famously covered her quitting cocaine after one "excruciating" night with Paul Thomas Anderson and Quentin Tarantino. She has not, as far as we can find, said anything on the record about cigarettes one way or the other.

Paparazzi shots circulated in the mid-2000s; nothing on the record since.

Fan archives and a few 2007-era blogs have photos of Lavigne smoking in her early twenties. She has never addressed it in an interview that we can find, and there is nothing recent. File under "probably, back then, who knows now."

Early No Doubt-era photos exist; she has never discussed it.

There are a handful of early-90s photos of Stefani with a cigarette, and that is the entire public record. The one smoking quote attached to her is about her brother Eric, who wrote "Don’t Speak" while he would "stay up all night and smoke cigarettes and eat burritos."

Nothing reliable on the record.

We looked. No interviews, no statements, no reliable reporting. The searches probably come from the Exile in Guyville aesthetic more than anything she has said.

Nothing reliable on the record.

Harvey gives few interviews and none we found touch on it. Unknown.

Nothing reliable on the record.

No statements or reporting either way. Unknown.

Nothing reliable on the record.

A classically trained singer who has protected that voice for fifty years; we found no reporting that she smoked, and nothing saying she did not.

Nothing reliable on the record.

No statements or reporting either way. Unknown.