50 Best Country Songs About Work
Best Country Tracks for Hardworking Days
There’s a certain headspace that comes with long shifts and tired mornings. Not tired in a cozy, coffee-commercial kind of way, but the kind where your back aches and your brain runs on autopilot. You’re clocking in, half-thinking about lunch, half-wondering how the week got away from you. The right song cuts through all that. It catches that rhythm of steel-toed boots on concrete or the hum of fluorescent lights in an office that’s too cold. It’s not pep talk music, it’s the kind that sits in the grind with you and makes it feel less lonely.
Nobody’s punching the time clock like some slick music video. It’s early alarms, worn-out gloves, maybe an empty thermos before noon. It’s a radio in the corner that fades in and out, landing on a verse that somehow lines up with your mood. Maybe it’s Chris Stapleton stretching out a note like he’s got nowhere better to be. Maybe it’s Kacey Musgraves spotting the beauty in the slow moments. Or Johnny Cash laying out a rhythm that feels like the sound of getting through the day. These tracks don’t try to wrap the workday in a neat little bow. They let it be messy, repetitive, and sometimes kind of beautiful in its own stubborn way.
Work can be brutal, and it can be grounding, sometimes in the same afternoon. These songs tap into that strange mix and turn it into something you can carry with you from clock-in to clock-out. They share DNA with pop, rock, country, and R&B songs that have carried people through long days for decades. Here are the best country songs for working life.
Top 10 Work Country Songs
1. '9 to 5'—Dolly Parton
2. 'Working Man Blues'—Merle Haggard
3. 'Take This Job and Shove It'—Johnny Paycheck
4. 'Sixteen Tons'—Tennessee Ernie Ford
5. 'Hard Workin' Man'—Brooks & Dunn
6. 'Forty Hour Week (For a Livin')'—Alabama
7. 'Coal Miner's Daughter'—Loretta Lynn
8. 'I'm a Ramblin' Man'—Waylon Jennings
9. 'Workin' for a Livin''—Huey Lewis and the News
10. 'Oney'—Johnny Cash
Country Songs About Labor and the Daily Grind #11—20
11. 'Shiftwork'—Kenny Chesney featuring George Jones
12. 'Hard Hat and a Hammer'—Alan Jackson
13. 'Workin' Man's Ph.D.'—Aaron Tippin
14. 'Country Money'—Miranda Lambert
15. 'Six Days on the Road'—Dave Dudley
16. 'Eighteen Wheels and a Dozen Roses'—Kathy Mattea
17. 'Tupelo Mississippi Flash'—Jerry Reed
18. 'Amarillo By Morning'—George Strait
19. 'Cost of Livin''—Ronnie Dunn
20. 'Shuttin' Detroit Down'—John Rich
Country Songs About Work Life and Blue-Collar Careers #21—30
21. 'God Bless the Working Man'—Mark Chesnutt
22. 'The Factory'—Kenny Rogers
23. 'Working Girl'—The Judds
24. 'I'm a Blue Collar Man'—Tracy Lawrence
25. 'Blue Collar Man'—Travis Tritt
26. 'I Never Picked Cotton'—Roy Clark
27. 'Past the Point of Rescue'—Hal Ketchum
28. 'The Worker's Song'—Dropkick Murphys
29. 'Working On the Chain Gang'—The Highwaymen
30. 'Workin' Man's Dollar'—Chris LeDoux
Country Songs About Laborers and Working People #31—40
31. 'Workin' Overtime'—Lainey Wilson
32. 'The Devil Went Down to Georgia'—The Charlie Daniels Band
33. 'Lunchbox Lessons'—BeatCraft Studio
34. 'Working Man's Song'—Morgan Wallen
35. 'The Dollar'—Jamey Johnson
36. 'Unemployed'—Steve Goodman
37. 'Shine'—Dolly Parton
38. 'The Hardest Working Man'—Neal McCoy
39. 'Factory'—Bruce Springsteen
40. 'I'm Working on a Building'—Bill Monroe
Country Songs About Working and The Grind #41—50
41. 'Work to Do'—Allison Moorer
42. 'Get a Job'—The Forester Sisters
43. 'It's Five O'Clock Somewhere'—Alan Jackson and Jimmy Buffett
44. 'Workin' Man'—Mike and the Moonpies
45. 'A Good Year for the Roses'—George Jones
46. 'I Don't Have to Work on Sunday'—John Michael Montgomery
47. 'The Ballad of Buddy Holly'—Johnny Cash
48. 'The House That Built Me'—Miranda Lambert
49. 'My Home's in Alabama'—Alabama
50. 'Roll On (Eighteen Wheeler)'—Alabama
© 2025 Carson McQueen
