Very few songwriters have found work an inspiring topic – and then you have people like Van Morrison, who enjoyed cleaning windows, writes LUCY KELLAWAY.
LAST WEEK the Guardiannewspaper published a list of the 1,000 best pop songs ever written. There were songs about love, sex, heartbreak, protest, life and death. Yet on the subject of work there was almost nothing: Dolly Parton's 9 to 5got a mention, but that was about it.
Why doesn’t work feature in pop songs? There are office novels and office sit-coms and office movies, but almost no office songs.
Office workers sit plugged into their iPods all day or listening to music streaming into their computers from customised radio stations. But the inspiration, it seems, never runs the other way, from the workers back to the songwriters.
You could say this is because work is too boring. Yet this can’t be the whole story, as there are pop songs about other boring things like sleeping or drinking cups of tea. There are even songs about boredom itself.
More likely, it is because pop singers don’t have any experience of being office workers, so can’t think of anything to say about it.
But even this isn't a complete explanation – after all, Freddie Mercury didn't have any experience of being a poor boy who killed a man and who kept singing "Galileo, Galileo, Figaro – magnifico". But that didn't stop him from writing Bohemian Rhapsody,one of the most successful pop songs of all time.
To research the subject further, I have just downloaded onto my computer Spotify, a new music streaming service. Now I have a library of several million songs at my fingertips, and so can confirm what I suspected: no one has written a song about PowerPoint presentations or spreadsheets.
Yet I have found enough songs about work to compile a short playlist, which makes surprisingly enjoyable listening.
The first two songs on my list are about manual workers in the US – blue collar life having more appeal to songwriters than white.
Indeed there was a fairly wide choice of songs about heavy lifting, but my favourites are Bruce Springsteen's Working on the Highwayand Glen Campbell's Wichita Lineman. One is gravelly, the other smooth, but the message is the same: it's tough being a working man. As Bruce toils on the roads he sings about "looking for a better life than this", while Glen moans that he needs "a small vacation".
Song number three is more up-to-date and could be the first in a new category called redundancy rock. Don't you Love Me No Moreis about getting the sack; it's written by Henry Priestman, who has just released his first album at 53. Some lines are quite good: "Too many chiefs and not enough Indians/ I was only ever one of your minions", but the chorus deteriorates into spelling out r-e-d-u-n-d-a-n-t, which doesn't slip off the tongue quite like R-e-s-p-e-c-t.
Next up is a pair of songs by girls about office work. Dolly Parton nailed this topic with 9 to 5. In the morning she pours herself a "cup of ambition", which goes sour as the day progresses. "They just use your mind and they never give you credit/It's enough to drive you crazy if you let it."
You have to hand it to Dolly for researching her subject. By contrast, in Sheena Easton's Morning Train, her baby "takes the morning train/ He works from nine to five and then/ He takes another home again" – thus the office part of the day is edited out altogether.
The next song on my playlist was never released as a single, but became a cult hit on YouTube. It is two managers at Bank of America, singing a rewritten version of U2’s One. Watching it again now (and I urge you to do so) it is no longer comic, but more a poignant message from another life.
It makes me wonder why we didn’t realise when we first saw it that banking was over. When two grown men take the stage and solemnly sing: “One bank, one chord, one spirit, we get to share it, leading us all to higher standards” to an audience who appeared to be loving every minute, we should have known that something had gone horribly wrong.
Back in the commercial world of pop, the next song is the Kaiser Chiefs with Oh my God, supplying more workplace alienation. "But you work in a shirt with your name tag on it/ Drifting apart like a plate tectonic/ It don't matter to me/ 'Cos all I wanted to be/ Was a million miles from here".
This sentiment is echoed by Bachman-Turner Overdrive in Taking Care of Business.
This song, at least, suggests an alternative to the horrors of the office – buying a second-hand guitar and being self-employed instead.
The thing that unites these songs is the knee-jerk idea from people who have probably never set foot in an office that work is bad if you have it and bad if you lose it. Workers are put upon and bosses are horrid, and it’s all pretty wretched.
Yet after much searching I have come up with two songs that are not negative. In Car Wash by Rose Royce, happy workers are pleased that “the cars never seem to stop coming”, and their bonhomie even spreads to their employer: “The boss doesn’t mind if you sometimes play the fool.”
The only other song I could find in which work is seen as a good thing also curiously involves washing things – Cleaning Windowsby Van Morrison.
“I’m a working man in my prime/ I’m happy cleaning windows” he sings.
I applaud the sentiment, although it surprises me. I find cleaning windows a dreadful chore as it is so hard not to leave smears. I wish Van would write another song telling me how to do it. – ( Financial Times)
