Yeah, I’m sure there are about a million of these. Anyway, I’ve been thinking about songs in which the singer decides that working hard all your life is kind of a dumb idea and that material comforts just aren’t worth the effort. Those great songs that make the adolescent in you want to chuck it all instead of spending your life going to work and paying down a mortgage. (We’ll put aside for now the fact that many of these singers went on to be really rich themselves.)
In “Anthony’s Song”, Billy Joel surveys his neighbors – the mother who moves out to Hackensack, the beat cop who works a second job to buy a Cadillac – and tells them, “good luck movin’ up cause I’m movin’ out.”
Carole King (by way of The Monkees) laments another “Pleasant Valley Sunday / here in status symbol land” and wails, “Creature comfort goals / They only numb my soul and make it hard for me to see / My thoughts all seem to stray, to places far away / I need a change of scenery”.
And from a “dirty old part of the city” where there “ain’t no use in tryin’”, Eric Burdon of The Animals mourns his “daddy in bed a-dyin’” after “workin’ and slavin’ his life away.” He pleads with his doomed girl, “we gotta get out of this place, if it’s the last thing we ever do. Girl there’s a better life for me and you.”
So, what are some of your favorite songs in which the singer looks around at all the getting and spending and laying waste of powers and says, “fuck this shit”?
There’s a song by George Thorogood called “Get a Haircut and Get a Real Job” that’s pretty cool. It’s about a kid who wants to play Rock ‘n’ Roll for a living. Everyone advises him to be like his hardworking brother Bob until he hits the big time.
“I’m ten times richer than my big brother Bob,
but he’s got a haircut and he’s got a real job.”
There’s The Specials “Rat Race” that comes direct to mind…
“You plan your conversation to impress the college bar
Just talking about your Mother and Daddy’s Jaguar
Wear your political T-shirt and sacred college scarf
Discussing the worlds situation but just for a laugh”
Well for the ones who had a notion yeah the notion deep inside
That it ain’t no sin to be glad you’re alive
I wanna find one face that ain’t looking through me
I wanna find one place, I wanna spit in the face of these Badlands.
–Springsteen
along with
“It’s a town full of losers, I’m pulling out of here to win” and
“Baby this town rips the bones from your back
It’s a death trap, it’s a suicide rap
We gotta get out while were young
`cause tramps like us, baby we were born to run”
The men in the factory are old and cunning
You don’t owe nothing, so boy get running!
It’s the best years of your life they want to steal!
You grow up and you calm down and You’re working for the clampdown.
You start wearing the blue and brown and you’re working for the clampdown.
So you got someone to boss around. It makes you feel big now… *
The guy from CCR left a good job in the city, workin’ for the man every night and day, because people on the river are happy to give. Sure they are. And the Five Man Electrical Band took off their collective hat and said, “Imagine that–me workin’ for you!”
[del]These might be more about overall existentialist ennui, but I guess in some way they can be related to the rat race:[/del]
Actually, on reflection, I think the following songs represent more of a surrender to than a rejection of the rat race…
I always hear this as more of a tale of drug use – “lines on the mirror” and “call the doctor / I think I’m gonna crash” – more than of the humdrum, workaday world. But, it is true that “They went rushin’ down that freeway, / messed around and got lost / They didn’t care they were just dyin’ to get off” which seems like they’re trying to get out of whatever dead-end life they’ve gotten themselves into.
All good examples, everyone. Thanks for the links. I don’t think I’d ever heard “Working Class Hero” in its entirety before.