Results for “itinerant, disposable labor”

Songs

Fruits of My Labor

Lucinda Williams

A hushed, sensuous meditation on hard-won ease, sung to an absent lover whose memory the singer keeps circling back to even as…

earned solitude memory and longing domestic sensuality

W.O.L.D.

Harry Chapin

A washed-up radio DJ calls his ex-wife out of the blue, half-bragging and half-pleading, and slowly reveals a life of failed…

failed masculinity and fatherhood the gap between public persona and private failure itinerant, disposable labor

Four Strong Winds

Neil Young

A drifting laborer weighs a move west for work while quietly accepting that the relationship he's leaving behind won't survive…

itinerant labor resignation fading love

Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?

Abbey Lincoln

Abbey Lincoln's 1991 reading of the Depression-era standard strips the song back to its bare, bitter arithmetic: a man who built…

economic betrayal labor and disposability war and its aftermath

Cowpoke

Colter Wall

A first-person cowboy ballad built entirely on paradox: the speaker is poor yet rich, lonesome yet happy, tied to nothing but…

freedom vs. poverty itinerant labor romantic detachment

Old Pipeliner

Rodney Crowell

This is a straight-up blues pastiche built on AAB stanzas and stock boasting imagery, closer to a jam vehicle than a narrative…

sexual boasting itinerant labor as metaphor blues tradition/homage

Come Wind Come Rain

Vashti Bunyan

A brief, folk-song sketch of itinerant travel, sung with plain acceptance of whatever weather comes. It reads less like a story…

itinerancy acceptance of nature simplicity of rural life

Katie Cruel

Bert Jansch

This is a traditional Appalachian folk lament, here rendered by Bert Jansch in his hushed, weathered late-career voice, about a…

exile and rejection itinerancy social reversal of fortune

You Got To Walk That Lonesome Valley

Mississippi John Hurt

This is a country-blues talking through a breakup, built almost entirely from floating verses about failed romance, rabbit…

romantic dissolution evasion and pursuit rural imagery as metaphor

Gentle on My Mind

Alison Krauss

A cover of John Hartford's classic drifter song, sung here by Alison Krauss with a woman's voice addressing a wandering lover…

freedom vs attachment memory as intimacy itinerancy

Jersey Shore

The Promise Ring

A brief, offhand travelogue of restlessness set against a fading summer, where the speaker's physical drift along the Jersey…

transience aging out of youth seasonal decline

Strike Blues

John Lee Hooker

A first-person lament from the depths of an auto industry strike, where the speaker's survival hinges on a labor dispute he has…

economic precarity labor and industry dependency on institutions

Breathe (In the Air)

Pink Floyd

An opening address that sounds like gentle life-advice slowly reveals itself as a warning about the trap of compulsive labor and…

existential dread conformity and labor the passage of time

Black Swan

Thom Yorke

A weary, profane sermon on futility dressed as a breakup or self-help pep talk gone sour. Thom Yorke catalogs failure, dead…

futility and resignation disposability of people failure to please others

Something More Than Free

Jason Isbell

A working-class narrator describes his days through the rhythm of manual labor, framing exhaustion and diminished expectation as…

labor and class faith as consolation resignation vs. dignity

Ft. Worth Blues

Steve Earle

Steve Earle's tribute to a departed friend (widely understood as Townes Van Zandt) turns a travelogue into an elegy, mapping…

grief and mourning itinerancy and homelessness artistic legacy

This Ain't No Picnic

Minutemen

A short, blunt punk song about wage labor as a form of daily indignity. The narrator describes clocking in and out for a boss he…

wage labor and exploitation class resentment dignity versus survival

Asking for Flowers

Kathleen Edwards

A woman tallies a decade-plus of unglamorous domestic labor and emotional endurance in a marriage that has quietly failed her,…

domestic labor and its invisibility marital exhaustion divorce/separation aftermath

(Rap) Superstar

Cypress Hill

A cautionary anatomy of the music industry told from inside it, using the fantasy of the 'rap superstar' as bait before B-Real…

disillusionment with fame industry exploitation isolation and family cost

Soon the New Day

Talib Kweli

A club-and-nightlife narrative that follows the mating rituals of a night out, mapping the performance, pretense, and…

casual sex and disposability performance and masquerade gender dynamics and predation

Diamond Day

Vashti Bunyan

A short pastoral hymn that treats an ordinary day of rural labor as something precious, using plain agricultural imagery to…

rural simplicity contentment the sacred ordinary

Workin' Day and Night

Michael Jackson

A frantic, groove-driven complaint disguised as a love song: the narrator is exhausted not by manual labor but by the endless…

overwork as metaphor for unreciprocated effort suspicion and jealousy exhaustion

Superwoman

Gladys Knight

Gladys Knight catalogs the domestic labor of a woman keeping a household running while her partner grows cold and indifferent,…

emotional labor and domestic care withheld affection self-respect and pride

The Only Heartbreaker

Mitski

Mitski casts herself as the sole villain in a relationship, resigned to always being the one who does damage while her partner…

self-blame and guilt imbalance in relationships performative repentance

Cheerleader

St. Vincent

A quietly furious refusal set to a lurching, theatrical arrangement: the narrator catalogs her own compromises and…

self-erasure in relationships complicity and compromise refusal/resistance

Traveling Riverside Blues

Robert Johnson

A restless travelogue of the Mississippi Delta juke-joint circuit, this is Robert Johnson at his most physically direct — a…

itinerant desire sexual boasting bondage and debt

Harder Better Faster Stronger

Daft Punk

A single fragmented phrase is chopped, looped, and reassembled through vocoder into a mantra about relentless productivity and…

labor and productivity machine identity repetition and ritual

To Live Is to Fly

Townes Van Zandt

A traveling songwriter's meditation on impermanence, love without possession, and the necessity of moving on, framed as both a…

impermanence itinerant life love without attachment

Shayla

Blondie

Blondie sketches a factory worker's escape fantasy that curdles into something stranger and sadder — a wish to dissolve into…

alienation from labor longing for escape the illusory nature of freedom

It Came Upon a Midnight Clear

Rosanne Cash

This is a traditional 19th-century Christmas hymn, written by Edmund Sears in 1849, performed here by a young Rosanne Cash on a…

longing for peace weariness and labor spiritual hope

Call Your Girlfriend

Robyn

Robyn scripts a breakup for a man on behalf of the woman he's about to leave someone for, coaching him line by line on how to…

infidelity and self-justification emotional labor the ethics of kindness

Flower

Moby

This track isn't really a Moby lyric at all but a looped field-recording-style sample of an African American work/children's…

labor and repetition folk memory loss

Lampshades On Fire

Modest Mouse

A frantic party anthem doubles as a parable about environmental and cultural exhaustion, tracking a group that burns through one…

environmental collapse consumerism and disposability willful denial

Sandusky

Uncle Tupelo

A grim, working-class dirge about exhaustion and dead ends, delivered in the voice of someone addressing a person on the verge…

industrial despair class fatigue futility versus endurance

Make Me a Pallet On Your Floor

Mississippi John Hurt

A traditional blues plea for shelter and intimacy that hides a tangle of romantic complications beneath its plain domestic…

itinerancy and homelessness secret or illicit love jealousy and threatened violence

My Black Mama Part 1

Son House

An early Delta blues performance built from loosely linked verses about a woman, sexual and romantic frustration, and…

desire and dissatisfaction mortality and religious doubt masculine boasting

Blues Man

B.B. King

B.B. King uses a first-person narrator identified as an aging traveling musician to plead for dignity and recognition, framing…

itinerant hardship dignity under judgment aging and endurance

Dixieland Delight

Old Crow Medicine Show

A rural courtship scene set to a loping backroads drive, this song stacks pastoral imagery and a Saturday-night payday against a…

rural romance regional pride leisure after labor

Blues Run the Game

Laura Marling

This is Laura Marling's rendition of a 1965 folk standard originally written by Jackson C. Frank, a song about restless flight…

itinerancy and escape addiction as coping mechanism inescapability of sorrow

Slide Tackle

Japanese Breakfast

A short, almost breathless meditation on the effort of self-improvement, framed through the odd, physical image of a soccer…

self-sabotage the labor of happiness obsessive thought patterns