Songs about work and hard times
Before Covid-19 struck, there have been songs about working hard, how hard it is to find work, and how harder it is to keep it
It’s the current state of the world: “Tough All Over” — which was also a hit song by John Cafferty & The Beaver Brown Band in 1985.
Millions of people have been furloughed, laid off or retrenched due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Before the virus struck, there have been songs about working hard, how hard it is to find work, and how harder it is to keep it.
We’ve gone through hard times at one time or another, but we’ve always managed to bounce back. James Taylor sang about “Hard Times” and how “we’ve got to hold on” in spite of having no work and no income.
It sucks to be jobless, as Gary “US” Bonds’ “Out of Work” said. Bruce Hornsby & The Range sang how segregation magnified unemployment with “The Way It Is.”
Finding work is getting so hard that it’s even harder to keep the one that we already have, and doing something we don’t even like. The Drive-By Truckers sang about “This F**king Job,” and so did Johnny Paycheck who said, “Take This Job and Shove It.”
If you’re working at the “Car Wash” like Rose Royce’s hit, then I’m sure you’ve got the “Working at the Car Wash Blues,” like Jim Croce did. And according to Huey Lewis & The News, it’s always been “Workin’ for a Livin’.”
Very often we do the daily grind and then look forward to what Loverboy sang about in 1982: “Working for the Weekend.”
Rush’s “Working Man” is an ode to every nine-to-fiver, whose only solace, after a hard day’s work, is an ice-cold beer.
‘A Hard Day’s Night’
The Beatles’ “A Hard Day’s Night” is about “working like a dog” and finding relief in the arms of a loved one who “makes me feel alright.” It’s the anthem of every “Blue Collar Man,” accurately sang by Styx, and Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “The Working Man.”
Bachman-Turner Overdrive seemed to have cornered the market on the working class, with hits like “Blue Collar” and “Takin’ Care of Business” — the former about working hard, the latter about hardly working.
The Clash said it best when they sang about jobs like a “bus driver, ambulance man” or a “ticket inspector” as “Career Opportunities” are “the ones that never knock.”
But sometimes, we need to take whatever life throws our way just to survive. “Working 9 to 5” is tougher now than when Dolly Parton first sang about it in 1980.
Yet many still refuse to heed to The Offspring’s plea, “Why Don’t You Get a Job,” choosing to work less in the least amount of time and trying to make the most out of it.
Not fair. Dire Straits’ 1985 hit “Money for Nothing doesn’t nearly apply here. Drastic times call for drastic measures. In troubled times, we need to take stock of things and be grateful for what we’ve got and be thankful for what we can get.
Methinks it’s time to buckle down and do less of what Bon Jovi sang and more of what Mick Jagger: Let’s stop “Livin’ on a Prayer” and “Let’s Work.”
As far as John Lennon was concerned, a “Working Class Hero” is something to be.