Labour & Pop Culture: Working Class Man

This week’s installment of Labour & Pop Culture is “Working Class Man” by Jimmy Barnes. This song was written by Journey’s Jonathan Cain and appeared in the regrettable 1980s comedy Gung-ho.

The song fits into the valourization of blue-collar workers category. The imagery in the video is of steel mills and farms and men at work. Women are “little women” who will one day be the man’s wife.

There is some hint of distrust in government and the belief that a work ethic will allow him to get ahead (both themes in the heartland rock of the 1980s). There are the usual nods to blue-collar touchstones, including God, Elvis, Vietnam, blue jeans, and fathers. It is not lyrically complex but it speaks to the stereo-typical working-class worker in 1980s America (although the song was really only a hit in Australia).

It would be interesting to rewrite the lyrics to speak to today’s working class, mostly likely female workers of colour in precarious and often multiple urban service industry jobs. Would we see mainstream rock songs with images of and lyrics about cleaners and fast food workers, maybe without citizenship status and perhaps single parenting in crowded apartment blocks?

Probably not because those lyrics and images don’t really feed the myth that workers can get ahead by dint of their hard work. Indeed, service-industry work is rarely seen as hard work (even though it is) warranting pride. And certainly there is no pathway mooted for these workers to become yeoman farmers (at least in America…) after they have paid their dues as a wage slave.



Working hard to make a living
Bringing shelter from the rain
A father's son left to carry on
Blue denim in his veins
Oh oh oh he's a working class man

Well he's a steel town disciple
He's a legend of his kind
He's running like a cyclone
Across the wild mid western sky
Oh oh oh he's a working class man

He believes in God and Elvis
He gets out when he can
he did his time in Vietnam
Still mad at Uncle Sam
He's a simple man
With a heart of gold
In a complicated land
Oh he's a working class man

Well he loves a little woman
Someday he'll make his wife
Saving all the overtime
For the one love of his life
He ain't worried about tomorrow
Cause he just made up his mind
Life's too short for burning bridges
Take it one day at a time
Oh oh oh he's a working class man
Oh oh oh he's a working class man

Oh yeah
Yes he is
Well he's a working class man
Oh
Ma ma ma ma ma ma ma ma ma ma ma ma ma ma ma
I tell you he's a working class man

(Working class)
(Working class man)
Yes he is

(Working class)
(Working class man)
I wanna tell you he's a working class man

(Working class)
(Working class man)
Ma ma ma

(Working class)
(Working class man)
I got to tell you he's a working class man

(Working class)
(Working class man)
Yeah he is

(Working class)
(Working class man)

-- Bob Barnetson