Results for “weekly grind/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

Astral Weeks

Van Morrison

Van Morrison's title track drifts through a hazy, half-remembered landscape in search of rebirth and connection, using dreamlike…

rebirth and renewal spiritual longing displacement

Call It Stormy Monday

B.B. King

This blues standard (originally T-Bone Walker's) walks through the days of the week to trace a slow accumulation of despair,…

weekly grind/labor loneliness religious supplication

Finally Friday

George Jones

A workingman's release-valve anthem: cash burning a hole, a weekend lover waiting, and a chorus that treats Friday night as a…

escapism the work week grind hedonism vs. routine

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

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

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

Hangin' Out

Betty Davis

A relentless invitation to abandon the workday grind and lose the night in music, dancing, and each other. Betty Davis strips…

hedonism versus labor escapism physical pleasure

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

Rhinestone Cowboy

Madvillain

This is a boast track built on the tension between DOOM's mythologized mask persona and the grubby realities of the rap grind.…

masked identity/anonymity the rap grind vs. glamour boasting and self-mythology

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pocket Calculator

Kraftwerk

A deadpan celebration of the pocket calculator as both tool and instrument, in which Kraftwerk collapses the distinction between…

human-machine merger automation of creativity consumer technology as instrument

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

Diving Woman

Japanese Breakfast

A road song about self-invention, built around the image of the haenyeo, the free-diving women of Jeju Island known for their…

self-determination female labor and endurance longing and aspiration

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

Jambalaya

Hank Williams

A breathless invitation to a Cajun celebration, this song strings together food, music, and a woman's name into a single rushing…

celebration regional identity and place romantic anticipation

The Weekend

SZA

SZA casts herself as the mistress in a triangle and refuses the shame the role usually carries, framing her position as a…

infidelity and complicity self-worth versus desire possession and comparison

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

Are You Alive?

Orbital

A fragmented, mantra-like track that circles a question about whether emotional or authentic life survives inside systems of…

alienation under capitalism authenticity vs. performance emotional numbness

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

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

She

Gram Parsons

A hymn-like tribute to an unnamed Southern Black woman, built around the recurring refrain of her singing voice as the one…

Southern history and labor faith and gospel devotion admiration across difference

Save Me

Nina Simone

A woman in the grip of a bad romance turns her plea into a comic-desperate cry for rescue, invoking cartoon superheroes…

romantic entrapment self-sacrifice in love desperation and helplessness