“Why Don't You Get a Job?” by The Offspring

"Why Don't You Get a Job?" followed "Pretty Fly (for a White Guy)" as the second single from Americana, the Offspring's fifth studio album, from 1998, and it catches the band at their most gleefully goofy. Dexter Holland wrote it by himself, and Dave Jerden produced and mixed it, with Bryan Carlstrom engineering.

Instead of the usual pop-punk sprint, it bounces along on a jaunty, sing-song shuffle, dressed up with horns from Phil Jordan and Gabrial McNair and even a flute from Derrick Davis, while Holland hollers the title like a complaint he's tired of repeating. That lilt had plenty of listeners pointing at the Beatles: more than one music writer heard "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da", the 1968 White Album song, in its bones.

It traveled far beyond American radio, reaching the top 10 in several countries and going to number two in the United Kingdom, Australia, Iceland and Sweden. It later took its place on the band's 2005 Greatest Hits.

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