Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Working Tunes
Let’s start off March with some of the soundtrack of our lives, songs about work and working. Here are a few tunes that come to mind for me. Are some of these songs that come to mind for you as well, and do you have other tunes in your mental soundtrack?
Tennessee Ernie Ford’s “Sixteen Tons” is the first song that comes to my mind. It is a working man’s lament at a rigged system, while also boasting of great physical prowess, a man among men.
I grew up in the 1970s, my first concert was with our whole family going to see the Carpenters, so it should surprise no one that Jim Croce, with his blue collar folksy sound, would be next in my soundtrack. You know, “those steadily depressing, low-down mind-messing, working at the car wash blues.”
From there, we go uptempo, with a beat that gets us hustling towards the office or factory, with Dolly Parton’s “Working Nine to Five:”
About the same time, Huey Lewis and the News recorded a similarly uptempo tune. Notice that there are some of the same elements of workers’ lament about unfair imbalance of power and exploitation, but it is delivered in such a peppy manner that your mind latches onto “working for a living, working!”
Disco was nearing the end of its run as the Queen of Disco, Donna Summers recorded a song about an older waitress at a diner: “She Works Hard for the Money (so you’d better treat her right).”
Then there is that famous novelty tune, a country and western song recorded by Johnny Paycheck. The song was played on the radio on Friday afternoons and got plenty of jukebox play, with crowd participation at times, belting out the tag line “take this job and shove it!”
On the other hand, at the same time as Dolly Parton’s “Nine to Five” Sheena Easton was singing “9 to 5 (Morning Train)” in which she celebrated the connection between work and love. “My baby takes the morning train” while she keeps their little home and anticipates her man coming home at the end of the work day.
I’ll leave you with a song about workers working the Man, Johnny Cash’s irrepressible toe tapping tune “One Piece at a Time:”
I look forward to hearing your favorite work or working tunes in the comments.
Published in General
A classic . . .
“Erie Canal” is another.
Good one!
Now I’ll have Katrina and the Waves in my head all day.
Never seen Dave Dudley. I only knew the Livingston Taylor version. Thanks.
I love to play the video game Warframe, which has a pretty decent soundtrack. For the Fortuna update, they decided to do something different… an old school working song.
“We all lift together” became quite popular, even an unofficial motto for the largely cooperative player base.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kfqtO88ZlBQ
why not
This one was so good Volkswagen used it in a commercial.
https://youtu.be/1WGFRzcksxA
Goin’ to Work by Judy Rodman
Going for the deep country cuts. Thanks.