Songs about poverty

So I’m singing in the shower, as is my wont, and I’m singing “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?”

Then I start singing “Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out.”

And then I realize I’m onto something good here and follow up with “I Can’t Give You Anything But Love.” ("'cuz that’s the only thing I’ve plenty of, baby")

And now I’m stumped, because I still have about 5 minutes left to my shower (my hair’s really long) and I can’t think of any more songs that are about being poor. So I sing “Motherless Child” and (don’t laugh) Stevie Nicks’ “Stand Back” (because it’s about being alone and unwanted, which is close enough to poverty in the shower).

What other (not too obscure, shower-singable) songs about being poor do you know?

Bonus points awarded to any old classics. Surely Billie Holiday has some?

Ooh, I just thought of “God Bless the Child That’s Got His Own,” but I don’t know all the words.

And why are the ads below about cats??

Aw, man, I’m sorry for the triple post but could a patient mod please move this to Cafe Society, where I thought I had posted it? Grazie mille.

While you get shifted over to CS:

The Kingston Trio had a great one…
Just a little snippet:

"Charlie handed in his dime
At the Kendall Square Station
And he changed for Jamaica Plain
When he got there the conductor told him,
“One more nickel.”
Charlie could not get off that train.

Chorus:
Did he ever return,
No he never returned
And his fate is still unlearn’d
He may ride forever
'neath the streets of Boston
He’s the man who never returned."

I won’t link the whole lyric here (for obvious reasons), but the song is hilarious. If one were to search for Kingston Trio Charlie Train, they might see the whole song.

Poor Charlie.

Moving thread from IMHO to Cafe Society.

“In The Ghetto” by Elvis.
Great song, especially when Cartman sings it.

In the Ghetto

Lovechild

The Theme to Good Times (Keepin’ Your Head Above Water)

Hit the Road Jack

Check’s in the Mail (Leon Redbone song- not sure that’s the title)

No Money Blues

{But We’ll Travel Along, Singin’ a Song} Side by Side

showtunes:

At the End of the Day (Les Mis)
We Need a Little Christmas (Mame)
We’d Like to Thank You Herbert Hoover (Annie)
The Night that Goldman Spoke at Union Square, Your Daddy’s Eyes and Here in America (Silhouettes), all from Ragtime
If I Were a Rich Man (Fiddler on the Roof)
Consider Yourself at Home and You Gotta Pick a Pocket or Two (Oliver)
Those Canaan Days (Joseph & the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat)
Memory (sort of) (Cats)
Money and others (Cabaret [perhaps the most brutal of the showtunes, especially as it was enacted in the revival {major S&M}])

stockton, I believe the song title is M. T. A. (For those familiar with the song: what always used to bug me about it was, if Charlie’s wife could hand him a sandwich, why couldn’t she hand him a nickel?)

The Kinks’ “Dead End Street” (and, possibly, their brilliant “She’s Bought a Hat Like Princess Marina’s”)

Stevie Wonder’s “Village Ghetto Land”

The Down & Out song from Bugsy Malone

Paul Young Love Of The Common People

Underneath The Arches

“Busted” By Ray Charles and others

“Rockin’ in the Free World” by Neil Young

“Seeds” by Bruce Springsteen

“Living for the City” by Stevie Wonder

“Inner City Blues (Make Me Wanna Holler)” by Marvin Gaye

“Fast Car” by Tracy Chapman

Patches

Patches, from the 60’s. Girl from the wrong side of the tracks, rich boy’s family won’t let them be together.

Sampiro mentioned Side by Side, which some friends and I sang in a 4th grade talent show, in hobo outfits. We thought we were pretty good, but another bunch of little girls wearing baby doll pj’s stole the show singing a stupid song about a teddy bear with no hair.

Everclear’s I Will Buy You a New Life (featuring my favorite poverty related lyrics: I hate those people who love to tell you/Money is the root of all that kills/
They have never been poor/
They have never had the joy of a welfare christmas
)
Not poverty exactly, but working poor:

Five o’clock World (“Trading my time for the pay I get/living on money that I ain’t made yet”)

Cat Stevens’ Matthew & Son, a catchy song about a joyless low paying workplace.

Alienation’s For the Rich (And I’m Gettin’ Poorer Every Day) - They Might be Giants

How about the blues? Many blues songs have some reference to being poor (for example, one of my favorites: B.B. King’s Bad Luck). After all, they are the blues.

I also quite enjoy You Know You Ghetto by Sticky Fingaz and Petey Pablo.

How about “Fourth of July” by X (written by Dave Alvin).

“Common People”, by Pulp:

Rent a flat above a shop
Cut your hair and get a job
Smoke some fags and play some pool
Pretend you never went to school
Still you’ll never get it right
'Cause when you’re laying in bed at night
Watching roaches climb the wall
If you called your dad you could stop it all, yeah
You’ll never live like the common people
Never do whatever common people do
Never fail like common people
You’ll never watch your life slide out of view
And then dance and drink and screw
Because there’s nothing else to do

Maybe it’s more the music video than the song, but I’ll mention REM’s “Talk About the Passion”. It shows a lot of homeless people (“not everyone can carry the weight of the world”) intercut with shots of military ships. Then at the end it mentions how much money the military spent, or something. I don’t remember exactly.

I hear William Shatner reciting this, now.

King of the Road by Roger Miller
Little Red Shoes by Loretta Lynn
Applejack by Dolly Parton
Rocky Top by various