Nanci Griffith, who died in 2021 at 68, was a singer-songwriter who was initially marketed as a country singer, but for her Storms album, her label, MCA, moved her to the pop music division, which seemed a better fit – her songs didn’t take the tone of American exceptionalism that was typical of country songs; they often asked difficult questions and were critical of the way Americans treat each other. The sixth track, “It’s a Hard Life Wherever You Go” differs from the rest of the album, as an explicitly political song.
In this song, Nanci Griffith takes a cab ride in Belfast, where the driver comes across a young boy he knows who will have to grow up in the war-torn city. “What chance has that did got?” the driver asks. Later in the song, Griffith is waiting in line at a cafeteria when the fat man in front of her makes a racist remark to his children. She then draws parallels to these two events, making the case that racial tension in America is just as toxic as the political strife in Belfast. As the Reagan/Thatcher era devolved into the Bush/Major years, Griffith captured the frustration of liberals everywhere when she sang, “I am the back seat driver from America/And I can’t drive on the left side of the road.”
“It’s a Hard Life Wherever You Go” was released as a single, but didn’t chart. Griffith wasn’t fazed; she didn’t like pursuing hits, which she had to do in the country division, often recording songs by other artists just so she could get on the charts. Storms the album from which it was taken was produced by noted rock music producer Glyn Johns whom she credits for the musical style change to mainstream pop. The album landed at No. 42 on the Billboard Country Albums chart, and at No. 99 on the Pop Albums chart in 1989.
Robert Christgau did not much care for the album. He gave it a C+ and remarked, “I don’t know. But I expect she thinks it has something to do with art.” Mike Boehm, wrote in Los Angeles Times that in the song “It’s a Hard Life Wherever You Go”, “Griffith challenges what we have always been taught to believe: that America is the most principled of countries, the greatest force for global good. She ends the song by saying that a far different image–that of the Ugly American–is closer to fact.” Writing years later for AllMusic, critic Lindsay Planer noted that although her change in style was not well received by purists, Griffith “unfurled some of her finest musical stories to date”.
In the 1994 Hootie & the Blowfish song “Drowning,” lead singer Darius Rucker makes reference to Griffith’s song, singing:
Nanci singing it’s a hard life wherever you go
About some fat racist living in Chicago
