13 Labor Day Songs More Working People Should Hear

If you want to carry your stuff, get a duffel bag. If you want people to know you carry your stuff like a regular workin’ stiff, get a Carhartt duffel bag. It’s become one of those brands, like Pendleton or John Deere, that tells the world “It may say ‘Software Quality Assurance Engineer’ on my business cards, but it says ‘Regular Workin’ Stiff’ in my heart.” It’s durable. It’s no-nonsense. It’s good stuff. You don’t have to wear coveralls to work to know that.

And it’s right on cue for Labor Day weekend - and yet another weekend playlist from me, Meh’s writer and frustrated DJ, @JasonToon. But instead of the usual work-themed pop hits you’ve heard a millions times - “9 to 5” and “Take This Job and Shove It”, “She Works Hard For The Money” and “Working for the Weekend” - I thought I’d dig up some lesser-heard cries from the break room. WARNING: profanity ahead. That won’t surprise you if you’ve ever, you know, worked a job.

We’ll clock on with a tale of busting your ass under the table so you don’t lose your unemployment benefits, delivered with catchy glam/punk and music-hall humor by British skinhead rockers Cock Sparrer. “Working” (1982) makes its point with lines like “up and down the ladder like a fiddler’s elbow” and “call me a crook, call me bent, but I need more than food and rent”:

Country workhorse Aaron Tippin probably wouldn’t approve of that kind of welfare cheating. But he gets the ass-busting part, as on his 1993 hit “Working Man’s Ph.D.”:

Art Brut lead smartass Eddie Argos isn’t interested in the lessons learned from a hard day’s work. He warns the boss at his “Summer Job” (2009) that “if you want me sober and straight, I’m afraid I’m gonna be a little bit late” before begging “fire me, give me the sack”:

Also in 2009, Cam’ron nailed the paradox of the shitty job - you can’t live with it, you can’t live without it - on “I Hate My Job”. He complains “being here eight hours sure will get you nauseous” but lists the bills that have to get paid and the careers he should’ve pursued. The peak is the bridge, a heartbreaking clip of a job interview where he tries to claim his mom as a work reference before the interviewer asks him about prior convictions and says “You know we’re not hiring murderers, right?” You don’t have to be a convicted felon to feel a pang of recognition at a moment like that - you just have to have suffered some awful job interviews:

Three decades earlier and an ocean away, the Clash were no more enthused by their job prospects tearing tickets or opening letter bombs. Here’s a scorching 1982 live version of “Career Opportunities”, a song they originally released in 1977:

Texas rockabilly cat Joe Ely (a friend of the Clash, incidentally - he sings backup on “Should I Stay or Should I Go?”) wonders why his hours keep getting longer, his bills keep getting bigger, but “I Keep Gettin’ Paid the Same” (1981):

Sameness also reigns on the Bottle Rockets’ “Gotta Get Up” (1999). My fellow St. Louis-area natives repeat the same lyrics over and over, to really put the grind in the daily grind:

Is anybody surprised that Beck wasn’t exactly Employee of the Month at a fast-food chicken place, as chronicled on 1994’s “Soul Suckin’ Jerk”? Would YOU hire him?:

XTC’s Andy Partridge, meanwhile, “can take humiliation, and hurtful comments from the boss”, as long as it enables him to keep his wife and baby well-fed happy, on the bravely romantic “Earn Enough for Us” (1986):

Seattle punks Sicko find no such acceptance “going nowhere” with a “bunch of morons” in “On The Clock” (1994), but at least there’s free donuts:

Of course, the soundtrack to the best movie ever made about bullshit jobs - Office Space, what else? - is represented on this list. I know I said I wouldn’t post “Take This Job and Shove It”, but how could I resist Biz Markie’s guest growl on the chorus to Canibus’s “Shove This Jay Oh Bee” (1999)?:

Then again, no matter how shitty your dumb job is, it can always get shittier. “Once I was a slave at the sawmill,” Mel Tillis says in 1973’s “Sawmill”, and suddenly that office park feels a little more tolerable:

I promised you guys profanity, and in case you missed it in any of the songs above, here’s the prolific punk-pop machine M.O.T.O. with their unequivocal and monstrously hooky 2003 classic of the genre, “I Hate My Fucking Job”:

If you’ve ever hated a job, you get it. If you’ve never hated a job, consider yourself lucky that you don’t get it. And whatever your situation, I hope you enjoy a lazy, shiftless, self-indulgent Labor Day weekend!