Monday has arrived – and you know that Monday means music! For the month of May, our Spotlight Dancer is our friend and regular stellar MMMM participant, John of The Sound of One Hand Typing! The theme selected for this week is “Work songs, in honor of the Feast of St. Joseph the Worker/ May Day”. Let’s get this work party started!
Let’s start with this 1982 rock song about living paycheck to paycheck. He’s working for a living and feels like he will be until the day he dies. Some days just feel like that, don’t they?
Here’s Huey Lewis And The News with “Workin’ For A Livin'”:
Next up, forget the manicures and spray-on tans because the woman in this 2010 country song is working too hard to have time for it. During the week, she is a bartender and waitress who pulls double shifts to make ends meet.
But come Friday nights the redneck, blue collar girl with calloused hands is ready to get honkytonk loud. She boasts, “I’m the first to clock in but the last to pass out.”
Here’s Gretchen Wilson with “Work Hard, Play Harder”:
Next up is a song that was written by Prince (who wrote this song under the name of “Christopher”) which ultimately became this group’s first hit. The purple one discovered this group after coming across the video for one of their early singles on MTV. He showed up at one of their gigs in Los Angeles, then joined them onstage.
The group recorded this song with the appropriate trepidation that comes with a song written by a superstar. They had decided to remake it from the ground up, and were nervous about if Prince would like it or not. He went to their rehearsal after the record was done, and he was really thrilled with how it came out.
Get ready to dance, here’s The Bangles with “Manic Monday”:
Last, but definitely not least, is one of my favorite songs – one of the writers of this song was formerly a band teacher in Texas, and one of his fellow teachers would typically say at 3:30, “Let’s go grab a beer, it’s five o’clock somewhere.”
Years later, he decided it would be fun to write a song based on that phrase. He had heard the phrase so often before that he was sure that it had already been written, but after they couldn’t think of another song that used it, they banged the song out in about an hour and a half.
The timing on the song was so perfect, that the time from when it was written to when it was released to radio was about three months, a rarity in the industry. The song was initially pitched to Kenny Chesney, but his team passed.
Luckily this particular artist was looking for a song that he could cut with his friend Jimmy Buffett, so the rest, as they say, was history.
Feast your ears on Alan Jackson featuring Jimmy Buffett with “It’s Five O’Clock Somewhere”:
That’s a wrap for this week – see you on the dance floor!
Now on to the particulars of Monday’s Music Move’s Me:
I have the supreme honor and privilege of being a co-host with the inimitable Xmas Dolly and our musical cohort, the awesome Cathy from Curious as a CAThy, Callie of JAmerican Spice, and Alana of Ramblin’ with AM!
Want to join in the fun? It’s easy – just find a tune that rocks your boat, post it and link up – don’t forget to grab Xmas Dolly…er, um, I mean her button…over at her place here. Check out Xmas Dolly’s sidebar for the random themes we sport each week – and you can always ask for a specific theme of music you like, too. Check out the other music lovahs and let’s jam!
John of The Sound of One Hand Typing
Buffett and the Bangles, I love it
Huey Lewis has some fun music. “Workin’ For A Livin'” puts the oogie in the woogie on the 4M dance floor for me. Thanks for boogieing with me, my friend. Have a great week!
Good set here! I had the first one, and the other three here were great!
Lots of music to boogie to here, especially Manic Monday and It’s Five O Clock Somewhere. The older I get the more I love Jimmy Buffet.