50 Best Country Songs About Working Too Much

Country Music Songs for Long Work Days

There’s a strange fog that sets in when the hours blur together and the clock starts feeling like it’s mocking you. It isn’t pride in a job well done, not exactly exhaustion either, but something heavier sitting in your chest while the world keeps spinning without you. You’re running on caffeine and cheap takeout, driving home past dark roads you barely notice anymore, and a song comes on that hits harder than it should. It feels like it knows that restless ache of working too hard for too long. These tracks don’t try to make the grind sound noble. They sit in the middle of the mess and let it be heavy for a while.

Some tracks tell the story straight up with long nights, tired feet, and paychecks that disappear before you can breathe. Others circle around it, never naming work outright but holding the same feeling of being stretched thin and stuck in a loop. Even pop, rock, country, and R&B songs can find their way into that headspace, painting pictures of burnout and longing without spelling it all out. The theme runs deeper than lyrics about overtime shifts. It’s in the sigh between verses, the strained laugh of a narrator who’s trying to believe it’ll get better next week.

These songs won’t fix anything, but they might make the next commute a little less silent. Some were written with hard labor in mind, others weren’t meant for it at all, but the mood lines up like a puzzle piece you didn’t expect to fit. Crank them up loud, let them spill out of open windows or earbuds, and let the hum of work fade into the background for a few minutes. Here are the best country songs for anyone working too much.

1. '9 to 5' by Dolly Parton

2. 'Take This Job and Shove It' by Johnny Paycheck

3. 'Sixteen Tons' by Tennessee Ernie Ford

4. 'Working Man Blues' by Merle Haggard

5. 'Hard Workin' Man' by Brooks & Dunn

6. 'Forty Hour Week (For a Livin')' by Alabama

7. 'Shiftwork' by Kenny Chesney and George Strait

8. 'Coal Miner's Daughter' by Loretta Lynn

9. 'It's Five O'Clock Somewhere' by Alan Jackson and Jimmy Buffett

10. 'The Factory' by Kenny Rogers

11. 'Workin' for a Livin'' by Garth Brooks and Huey Lewis

12. 'Hard Hat and a Hammer' by Alan Jackson

13. 'Cost of Livin'' by Ronnie Dunn

14. 'Working Man's Ph.D.' by Aaron Tippin

15. 'Blue Collar Man' by Travis Tritt

16. 'The Dollar' by Jamey Johnson

17. 'Workin' Man's Dollar' by Chris LeDoux

18. 'Lord Have Mercy on the Working Man' by Travis Tritt

19. 'Workin' Man (Nowhere to Go)' by Nitty Gritty Dirt Band

20. 'Six Days on the Road' by Sawyer Brown

21. 'Work All Day' by Cory Branan

22. 'Hard Livin'' by Keith Whitley

23. 'Work to Do' by Allison Moorer

24. 'Working in the Coal Mine' by The Judds

25. 'Nose to the Grindstone' by Tyler Childers

26. 'Busted' by Johnny Cash

27. 'King of the Road' by Roger Miller

28. 'Wichita Lineman' by Glen Campbell

29. 'I Never Picked Cotton' by Roy Clark

30. 'Beer on the Table' by Josh Thompson

31. 'Dark as a Dungeon' by Merle Travis

32. 'The Workin' End of a Hoe' by Gene Watson

33. 'Sawmill' by Mel Tillis

34. 'The Workingman's Song' by The Rolling Stones

35. 'Factory' by Bruce Springsteen

36. 'California Cotton Fields' by Merle Haggard

37. 'Too Much Month (At the End of the Money)' by Marty Stuart

38. 'The Ballad of Forty Dollars' by Tom T. Hall

39. 'Blowin' Smoke' by Kacey Musgraves

40. 'Work Hard, Play Harder' by Gretchen Wilson

41. 'Livin' on a Prayer' by Bon Jovi

42. 'The Gambler' by Kenny Rogers

43. 'Fast Cars and Freedom' by Rascal Flatts

44. 'Midnight in Austin' by Bailey Zimmerman

45. 'A Day Late and a Dollar Short' by Donny and Marie Osmond

46. 'I Don't Want The Money' by Don Williams

47. 'Right On the Money' by Alan Jackson

48. 'The Devil Went Down to Georgia' by The Charlie Daniels Band

49. 'Tired' by Toby Keith

50. 'A Country Boy Can Survive' by Hank Williams Jr.