“Working Man” by Rush, the 1974 blue-collar anthem, features a lead character lamenting his laborious lifestyle. Most of the lyrical images relate to time – waking up at 7:00am, getting off work at 5:00pm, as examples. And therefore, the easy conclusion is that the “working” protagonist’s melancholy is a direct result of the tedium of an existence spent with one eye on the clock coupled with the monotony of punching in and punching out.
But that’s not “why they call [him] the working man”.
The real lamentations come only after the protagonist has concluded their workday, when, sitting at home with “ice cold beer“, they ponder how much better it seems their life could be. And that is the true curse of the “working man”. They will always have an impossible itch to scratch; never able to be mindful and at peace with the way things are, or able to rest on the pride of a good day’s labor, and always placing on a pedestal a life they have glamourized in their mind merely because it is not their own.
“I guess that’s what I am”.
As a side note – this is one of the few Rush hits that does not feature Neil Peart on the drums. Somewhere in some old notebook of mine is an Onion-style article I wrote … the headline was something like, “God allows devout atheist Neil Peart into Heaven” and went on to say something like God just needed to hear some kick-ass drum solos every once in awhile to help Him get psyched for the day.