Best Alternative Songs about Work
Music about Getting Hired, Fired and Working for the Man
Whether working for the man, working overtime or working for the weekend there seems to be a song written for just about everything related to work.
Some lyrics express what it's like to work at a thankless job, while others complain about getting laid off or not getting hired. Here are some of the best songs about getting, quitting and losing a job.
Get a Job
Getting a job is all about the search for career opportunities. What the Clash wants its listeners to know in their song Career Opportunities, is that those favorable circumstances are the ones that never seem to knock.
- A New Career in a New Town - David Bowie
- Can't Get Hired - The Bugs
- Career Opportunities - The Clash
- Get a Job - Home Grown
- Why Don't You Get a Job? - The Offspring
- You've Been Hired - Radar Bros.
- Nine to Five - Swingin' Utters
- Found a Job - Talking Heads
The song Nine to Five by the Swingin' Utters is not a remake of country star Dolly Parton's well known song 9 to 5, but is good music to mosh to if the need for getting work frustrations out happens to arise.
Working for the Man
Some jobs really do seem like thankless employment. Long hours, overtime and working for the man are what these songs are all about. In Devo's song Working in a Coal Mine, the instrumental background actually mimics the sounds that might actually be heard on long, grueling work days in a mine.
- Working in a Coal Mine - Devo
- Working - Dropkick Murphys
- Total Job - The Faint
- Working Class Hero - Green Day
- 22 Grand Job - The Rakes
- Work, Work, Work - The Rakes
- The Working Hour - Tears for Fears
- Work - Troubled Hubble
The Rakes, a Brit post-punk/art band out of London, has more than one song about working. Their song 22 Grand Job relates to new hires right out of college, and declares with sarcasm that a job paying $22,000 in the city is alright.
Take This Job and Shove It
Some of these songs about losing a job or quitting one could substitute for a letter of resignation. The song Dear Employer by the Minus 5, is a perfect example of this. The less polite way of resigning is sung by the Dead Kennedys in their remake of Take This Job and Shove It, the very well known anthem for quitting.
- The Art of Losing - American Hi-Fi
- Take This Job and Shove It - Dead Kennedys
- Dear Employer (The Reason I Quit) - The Minus 5
- Dear Employee - Papercuts
- I Think I'll Quit - Saves The Day
- Quitting a Job Three Times in a Year to Drink from 4 pm - Urchin
- Quit - The Waitresses
- Career Suicide - A Wilhelm Scream
On the other side of the desk, Dear Employee by the Papercuts is a song about getting fired. Two of the particularly harsh verses in this firing song are "Pick up your check and go...I don't need you" and "What can I do to shut you up right now?"
Alternative artists have written and remade many songs, most of them quite negative, about how work can be so thankless. They sympathize with those who must work in a less than satisfactory environment, workers who lose their jobs and those who can't get hired. Quit a job, get a job, whatever the work related issue, chances are there has been a song written and sung about it by an alternative musician.
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