Results for “weariness and labor”

Songs

Weary

Solange

A slow, hymn-like meditation on exhaustion and self-possession, "Weary" opens the emotional register of A Seat at the Table by…

exhaustion and endurance Black womanhood and dignity mortality of power

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

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

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

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

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

Jesus Is Calling

Hank Williams

A plain-spoken gospel invitation built almost entirely on a single repeated refrain, this is Hank Williams working in the…

religious faith spiritual weariness redemption

If I Could See the World

Patsy Cline

A weary adult voice imagines borrowing a child's unclouded vision as a way of escaping accumulated disappointment. The song…

lost innocence nostalgia for childhood perception weariness with adult disillusionment

Beast Of Burden

The Rolling Stones

A weary declaration of devotion dressed up as a refusal: the singer insists he won't be exploited or taken for granted, even as…

emotional labor in relationships self-worth and insecurity devotion disguised as protest

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

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

Happens to the Heart

Leonard Cohen

This is a late-Cohen autopsy of a life spent chasing and fleeing intimacy, delivered as a kind of confessional inventory. Cohen…

mortality and retrospection the failure of romantic and religious ideals self-mythologizing and its collapse

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

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

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

Hands on the Wheel

Willie Nelson

A wandering, self-destructive narrator arrives at a moment of grounding, finding stability not in ideology or vice but in…

disillusionment redemption through love moral ambiguity

Gravity Rides Everything

Modest Mouse

A hazy meditation on inevitability, disguised as a lullaby about waking up too early. The song treats gravity as a stand-in for…

mortality and decay determinism vs. free will domestic weariness

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

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

One Day At a Time

Merle Haggard

This is a plainspoken gospel prayer sung from a position of exhaustion and humility, asking for the strength to survive the…

religious surrender humility and human limitation present-moment endurance

Certainty

Big Thief

A quiet meditation on romantic uncertainty that refuses to resolve into either commitment or departure. Lenker circles the…

ambivalence in love impermanence faith versus doubt

The Robots

Kraftwerk

Kraftwerk stage a self-portrait as machinery, using flat repetition and a robotic vocal delivery to erase the line between the…

man-machine identity automation and labor depersonalization

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

Broken Clocks

SZA

SZA sketches the exhaustion of grinding through low-wage work while trying to hold onto self-possession and residual affection…

labor and survival independence vs. lingering attachment time and exhaustion

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

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

I'll Fly Away

Etta James

Etta James takes on the Albert E. Brumley gospel standard, a song built entirely around the promise of release from earthly…

death as liberation religious faith weariness and endurance

Disrespectful

Chaka Khan

A woman confronts a partner who has grown cold and careless, cycling between anger at being taken for granted and nostalgic ache…

self-worth romantic disillusionment emotional labor

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

America First

Merle Haggard

A late-career protest song from Merle Haggard arguing that American resources and attention spent overseas should be redirected…

war-weariness economic neglect populist nationalism

Richard Cory

Simon Jäger

Simon adapts Edwin Arlington Robinson's poem into a song about class envy and its blind spot: a factory worker idolizes a…

class envy the emptiness of wealth irony of appearances

Lay Me Down

Loretta Lynn

A late-career meditation on mortality that treats death not as an ending to fear but as the final release from a hard life.…

mortality faith and afterlife weariness and endurance

Hands

Four Tet

"Hands" is an instrumental piece built from folktronica textures — plucked strings, hand percussion, and looping samples — that…

craft and manual labor repetition as meditation organic vs. electronic texture

The Midnight Special

Creedence Clearwater Revival

CCR's take on this traditional American folk-blues song reworks a prison-camp lament into a swampy rock anthem, keeping its cast…

incarceration and forced labor folk tradition and inheritance longing for deliverance

Messin' With the Hook

John Lee Hooker

A slow-burning blues complaint built almost entirely on repetition and vamp, in which the narrator catalogs a partner's…

betrayal and infidelity labor and domestic exhaustion identity ('the Hook') as persona

Everything Is Free

Gillian Welch

Gillian Welch wrote this song in the early days of music piracy and free downloading, framing an artist's economic dispossession…

artistic labor and value piracy/free culture economic precarity

Drover

Bill Callahan

Callahan casts himself as a lone cattle-drover pushing a herd through a hostile, near-mythic American landscape, using the drive…

solitude and self-reliance the American frontier as psychological landscape emotional repression and displacement