An Anthem for Empathy: The Enduring Plea Against Division
From the moment the opening acoustic guitar chords begin, and especially when the velvet harmony of two legendary voices intertwines, you realize you’re listening to something more than just a song. “It’s a Hard Life Wherever You Go,” written and originally performed by the late, great Nanci Griffith, and later re-recorded as a haunting duet with Emmylou Harris, is a profound piece of socio-political commentary wrapped in a gentle, melodic folk-pop embrace. It’s a song that speaks to the shared human experience of strife, regardless of geography or history, proving that the struggle for understanding is, indeed, universal.
This powerful track was first released in 1989 on Nanci Griffith’s eighth studio album, Storms. While the album, her third for MCA, marked a conscious and sometimes criticized shift toward a more mainstream, pop-oriented sound—a move that saw her enlist rock producer Glyn Johns—the essential folk heart of her songwriting remained, beating strongly in this track. Though neither the single itself nor the album became a massive crossover commercial success in the US, the album Storms did manage to reach No. 42 on the US Billboard Top Country Albums chart and No. 99 on the US Billboard 200 (Pop Albums chart). Significantly, the album performed better across the pond, peaking at No. 38 on the UK Albums Chart.
The story behind the song is a testament to Griffith’s deep-seated activism and her conviction that the folk tradition must continue to document and challenge social injustice. She considered “It’s a Hard Life Wherever You Go” to be one of the most important songs she ever penned. The lyrics were born from her observations of two seemingly disparate conflicts, drawing a direct, painful parallel between the sectarian strife of “the Troubles” in Northern Ireland and the enduring, poisonous problem of racism in the United States. The narrative bounces geographically and emotionally, contrasting a conversation she had in a small coffee shop on Falls Road in Belfast—a historic flashpoint between Catholics and Protestants—with her own childhood memories of the civil rights era in America. This duality is the song’s core genius, showing that hate and division are the same cruel beast, whether they manifest in the streets of Dublin or the neighbourhoods of Chicago.
The meaning of the song is an urgent, timeless message about the cycle of hatred. Griffith acts as a gentle, yet firm, observer, documenting the senselessness of inherited prejudice. The chorus, repeated with devastating effect, delivers the song’s thesis: “If we poison our children with hatred / Then the hard life is all that they’ll know.” It is a plea for older generations to stop passing down the venom of their own biases and to break the cycle of violence, fear, and misunderstanding. When Emmylou Harris later joined her to record the track—a pairing of two of the most revered voices in Americana—the song’s elegiac quality was magnified, cementing its status as a reflective, mournful protest anthem. It is a song that doesn’t offer a simple solution, but it forces the listener to confront the difficult truth: until we choose empathy over enmity, it will remain a hard life wherever any of us may go. It’s an emotional echo of a time when folk music held a mirror up to society, a truly reflective, nostalgic piece that reminds us that some battles are, sadly, fought again and again.