“Too Much Time On My Hands” by Styx

"Too Much Time On My Hands" is Tommy Shaw's moment on Paradise Theatre, the 1981 Styx record on A&M, and he owns it top to bottom: he wrote it, sang it, and stepped out to tear through the guitar solo in the break. The idea came to him in a bar in Niles, Michigan, and the song sketches a guy with no job and no plans, sinking into daytime TV and cold beer while the hours pile up.

For a song about boredom it moves like a sprinter. John Panozzo drives it hard, Chuck Panozzo works bass and bass pedals underneath, Dennis DeYoung's keyboards jab away, and a five-player horn section piles on. Styx produced it themselves. Record World praised its quick pulse and the guitars snaking around it, and no other song Shaw both wrote and sang for the band climbed into the top 10.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.