The top 15 songs about being broke

We don't need to tell you that the most promising career options in America right now are boxcar-hopper, petticoat tailor or shepherd of hungry one-eyed alley cats. Fortunately, the condition of being stone-broke is a perennially popular theme in music (unless you're T.I.), and regardless of your taste in genre, there is a tune to accompany cooking canned beans over a street-corner bonfire. We took to our dusty archives to find a treasury of the best tunes for such times, and in no particular order, here are 15 of the most soot-blackened, pink slip-crumpling, rail-riding songs for you to sing to yourself in the unemployment line because you pawned your iPod weeks ago.

Surely there's plenty we forgot (sorry, Jeezy, next time!), because we were too busy mournfully playing our harmonicas. Tell us below in the comments!

Blind Alfred Reed, "How Can A Poor Man Stand Such Times And Live?": Covered and topically updated by Ry Cooder and Bruce Springsteen, Reed's laments about food prices and shoddy healthcare are as contemporary as your latest premium hike.

Geto Boys, "Ain't With Being Broke": You wouldn't know it from the radio today, but rap used to be about not having money for food, let alone a Learjet. Never has not getting a toy train for Christmas sounded like such a cry for class warfare.

The Clash, "Career Opportunities": Sure, being broke is lame, but what's even worse is a minimum-wage gig where you "make tea for the BBC" or "open letter bombs" for paunchy apparatchiks. A sneering Brits' answer to "Take This Job and Shove It."

Crystal Waters, “Gypsy Woman (She’s Homeless)”: You don’t usually look to house music for heartfelt lyrical content with a pro-social message. But what few words there are on this 1991 hit put a human face on being down and out. “She’s just like you and me,” New Jersey dance chanteuse Waters sings, “but she’s homeless. She just stands there singin’ for money, ‘La da dee, la da da. La da dee, la da da.’”

The Beatles, "Can't Buy Me Love": There are some single guys recently laid-off from Lehman Bros. who are trolling New York bars and really, really hoping this song is true. 

Bruce Springsteen, "Atlantic City": The Boss' preferred stimulus package involves heading to the Jersey shore and hooking up with the Mob. And we know all about "debts no honest man can pay" around these parts.

Dolly Parton, "Coat of Many Colors": Parton was a fashion maven even back when her mom could only stitch rags together. Now she has her own completely awesome theme park. Sometimes, things work out.

Creedence Clearwater Revival, "Fortunate Son": As if being poor wasn't injustice enough, John Fogerty reminds us that when the Army comes a-drafting for another foreign adventure, guess who most often has to take that call?

Loretta Lynn, "Coal Miner's Daughter": Back before "clean coal technology" was a spurious buzzword, Lynn's extended brood was up to their necks in the dirty stuff. We're glad to report that she has bought plenty of pairs of better shoes since then without having to sell a hog.

Sham 69, “Hey Little Rich Boy”: Populist British Oi! outfit Sham 69 threw down the class-baiting gauntlet with this 1978 song. It attempts to glamorize the trappings of poverty as only football chanting punk yobs can: “I don’t need a flash car to take me around/ I can catch the bus to the other side of town!”

Bob Marley “Them Belly Full (But We Hungry)”: Soul-stirring songs like this are the reason St. Bob is revered as a kind of Third World messiah. In “Belly,” he ponders the harsh realities he faced growing up in Jamaica’s notorious Trench Town slum: food shortages, pervasive dirt, the untenably high cost of living and poor people’s cri de coeur -- that “a hungry mob is an angry mob.”

Pulp, "Common People": Jarvis Cocker delivers the single best uppercut to rich kids fetishizing poverty in all of pop. This song should be on every art school syllabus in the world.

Erik B. and Rakim, "Paid In Full": The song finds Rakim reaching into his pockets in search of “dead presidents” but only “coming up with lint.” The song’s narrative arc is his contemplation of ways to generate income: a 9-to-5 job or robbery being chief among them. In the end, though, Rakim reaches a crucial realization: Rhyme pays.

Desmond Dekker, “The Israelites”: One of the first smash reggae hits, Dekker’s soulful classic likens the plight of a poverty-stricken working man to that of an ancient Hebrew slave: “Get up in the morning, slaving for bread, sir/ So that every mouth can be fed/ Poor me, the Israelite.”

Ruben Blades, "Adan Garcia": A sleeper pick that gets the nod because of the sheer wanton melodrama of its ending. A man gets laid off, robs a bank to support his family and dies in the getaway. The next day, the papers lead with "Robber Holds Up Bank with Son’s Water Pistol."

--August Brown and Chris Lee

(UPDATE: The commentariat was right, there's no excuse for not including Woody Guthrie on the original list. The entirety of "Dust Bowl Ballads" should be here. We sentence ourselves to one hour of fighting with a mangy dog for a crust of bread in penance.)

And here are a few more picks to play at your next hobo dance party.

Soundtrack to "Annie," "Hard Knock Life"
Roger Miller, "King of the Road"
Townes Van Zandt, "Marie"
Stevie Wonder, "I Wish"
Ray Charles, "I'm Busted"
Randy Newman, "Mr. President (Have Pity on the Working Man)
Merle Haggard, "Workingman Blues"
Phil Collins, "Another Day In Paradise"
The Temptations, "Papa Was A Rolling Stone"
Gwen Guthrie, "Ain't Nothing Going On But The Rent"
Elvis Presley, "In the Ghetto"
Run DMC, "Hard Times"
Donnie Hathaway, "Little Ghetto Boy"
Clarence Carter, "Patches"
Kanye West, "Spaceship"
Jerry Reed, "She Got the Goldmine, I Got the Shaft."

Photo credit: Dorothea Lange / University of Chicago Press

Huge thanks to Randy Lewis, Ann Powers, Geoff Boucher, Charlie Amter, Todd Martens, Chris Lee, Agustin Gurza and Margaret Wappler for taking time from repairing the holes in their ragged shoes to suggest songs for this list.

Comments

[gamdopa]

How can you not include the Kinks' "Low Budget"? a classic!

[Brier]

Don't forget the song "Money Is Tight" by Poi Dog Pondering!!!

[Robert]

"Out of Work" by Gary 'US' Bonds (Bruce Springsteen, writer)

[Kay]

Brother Can you Spare a Dime---why not this one? Leftover from the depression covered nicely by Streisand in the '60's.

[Alexis]

"Don't push me cuz I'm close to the edge. I'm trying not to lose my head. Its like a jungle sometimes it makes me wonder how I keep from going under. " Grandmaster Flash, The Message

"Living just enough, just enough for the city" Stevie Wonder, Living For The City

[Brian]

Anothe rgreat one from the great 80's "Money's To Tight (To Mention) from Simply Red perfect for now!

[William]

Wow...missed Simply Red's "Money's Too Tight To Mention"

[dawnfather]

"No Depression in Heaven", recorded by the Carter Family during the Great Depression, later by Uncle Tupelo, a predecessor of Wilco.

[Johhny B]

Fantastic list! I'd add "James Alley Blues" by Richard "Rabbit" Brown "...I done seen better days but I'm puttin' up with these..." What a line!

[vbv]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8iIvrgnp-I
great new obama song

[Amy Kleinpeter]

"I'm Busted" by Johnny Cash!

[Louise]

I can't get this song out of my head: "Your Cash Ain't Nothin' But Trash". For the various holders of all the worthless financial paper, the lyrical line fits, "You ain't lost nothin' what you cryin' about." For McCain, I think the following line works, "This ain't no circus and I don't need a clown." For Palin, I would choose, "Baby you're cruisin' way past you're speed."
My apologies to the recording artists, The Clovers and the Steve Miller Band, if I've offended anyone.

[tsto309]

when i win the lottery, camper van beethoven

[Irving]

How about "i've Got Tears in my Ears from Lying On My Back Crying Over You" ?

Oh sorry, wrong problem

[waynation]

U can't forget about kid rock with "All Summer Long"

[nmguy]

How about adding "Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out" to the list?

"In my pocket, not one thing penny. And as for friends, I ain't got any".

[Elmwood Ferry]

As Kay mentions above, "Brother Can You Spare a Dime" was a Depression standard. In the 1940s Peggy Lee began her career with "Why Don't You Do Right," whose refrain was "get out of here and get me some money too." And back to the Depression, the classic "One Meatball," about a man who has only the money to order one meatball and asks for bread. He is told, "You get no bread with one meatball." Covered by Ry Cooder. Speaking of whom, Cooder also covered "The Farmer is the Man Who Feeds Us All." The Depression produced lots of great down-and-out music, including "Goin' Down the Road Feelin' Bad" which became a standard of the Grateful Dead.

[AnaJana]

How about Boney Fingers, by Hoyt Axton?

and definitely Brother, Can You Spare a Dime. www.youtube.com/watch?v=eih67rlGNhU, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brother,_Can_You_Spare_a_Dime%3F

[teddyboone]

Gimme a break! Not a mention of Woody Guthrie. Ridiculous! I suggest Randy Lewis, Ann Powers, Geoff Boucher, Charlie Amter, Todd Martens, Chris Lee, Agustin Gurza and Margaret Wappler run out now in their 100 dollar running shoes and buy, steal, or beg a Woody Guthrie album. Don't talk to me as if you know something about music for hard times, its history, its relevance, if you don't know Woody Guthrie and what he sang about and stood for and lived. Git a clue!! Woody should be at the very top of any such list. And by the way, I listen to Bruce, but if he ever knew hardtimes, he forgot them long ago. Rich rock stars and pretentious yuppie writers yelping about hardtimes. Gimme a break! May you learn now.

[Kirby Lambert]

How about Bobby Bare's great album "Hard Time Hungrys". I don't think it was ever released on CD but it contained some great cuts. A blues take of "Buddy Can You Spare a Dime", "Two For a Dollar" the story of the auction of a man's life, "Warm and Free" and "Daddy's Been Around The House Too Long".

The album was released in 1975.

[Fear Itself]

No such list would be complete without Woody Guthrie - maybe the most apropos comment on the current crisis is best represented by his "I Ain't Got No Home" from 1938:
I ain't got no home, I'm just a-roamin' 'round,
Just a wandrin' worker, I go from town to town.
And the police make it hard wherever I may go
And I ain't got no home in this world anymore.
And since you are offering the songs of poverty as a comment on the greed that got us here, don't forget Pink Floyd's "Money"

[Billy Tom]

"Your steak ain't no better than my pork chop; your Cadillac ain't no better than my bus stop" -- "Qualified" by Electric Flag.

[Chris]

Do Re Mi by Woody Guthrie

[Tonda McKay]

You have one from Dolly Parton, but so close to the holidays, don't forget "Hard Candy Christmas", that's what it will be for all of us.

[Greg Oliva]

Loved your list, but was surprised that "Whitey's on the Moon" did not make the cut. I think the band was "Everyday Life", but many have covered it.