Top Five Songs About Mondays

Well, here we are again. It’s Monday morning, we’re all back at work (if we’re lucky), and we’ve got those beginning-of-the-week blues.

Over the years, many songs have been written about the first day of the traditional work week. Here, we give you our list of the five best songs about Mondays:

“Manic Monday” (The Bangles): You know your day’s going to suck if, like Bangles singer Susanna Hoffs, the alarm wakes you while you’re in the middle of a dream about “kissing Valentino by a crystal blue Italian stream.” And you know your career has peaked when Prince (who wrote this song) offers it to you two years after he wrote it for another band few people have heard of (Apollonia 6). 

“Monday Monday” (The Mamas & the Papas): “Every other day of the week is fine, yeah/But whenever Monday comes, you can find me cryin’ all of the time.” John Phillips wrote this song about someone’s lover leaving them on a Monday. But lines like “Monday Monday, can’t trust that day” ring true for almost everybody.

“I Don’t Like Mondays” (The Boomtown Rats): Singer Bob Geldof repeatedly asks listeners in the chorus to “Tell me why I don’t like Mondays.” Well, Bob, between mommy having a “silicon chip” in her head in the first verse, and the clean “Telex machine” in verse two, to learning a lesson about dying with some football game metaphors in verse three, we still have no idea what your issue is. But we all have our own reasons for wanting to “shoo-oo-woo-woo-woo-oot the whole day down.”

“Monday Morning” (Fleetwood Mac): “Monday morning you sure look fine/Friday I got travelin’ on my mind/First you love me, then you fade away.” Lindsey Buckingham wrote these lyrics in the early ’70s, but the crux of the song still rings true. To paraphrase, “I’m leaving on Friday, it’s Monday and you look great, so please don’t crap on my week.”

“Call It Stormy Monday (But Tuesday Is Just As Bad)” by T-Bone Walker: Probably the best Mondays song ever. Blues legend Walker’s pessimistic about the whole week: “They call it stormy Moday, but Tuesday’s just as bad/They call it stormy Monday, but Tuesday’s just as bad/Wednesday’s worse, and Thursday’s also sad.” But when we get to the weekend, it’s paycheck, partying, and repentance time: “Yes the eagle flies on Friday, and Saturday I go out to play/Eagle flies on Friday, and Saturday I go out to play/Sunday I go to church, then I kneel down and pray.” If Walker was praying for fewer Mondays, God hasn’t answered yet.