Hard times is more about how your family is doing emotionally than how much money you have. Rich people can have hard times ("hard times is a daddy and a mother livin' in a mansion and hatin' each other") and poor or working-class people can have good times, even in an economic depression, if they stick together and love each other regardless off the desire for material goods or better food.
I grew up hearing this song since I was a young child, and my family always used it as a shorthand, on long car rides to see doctors that we weren't at all sure would cure anything or even treat the symptoms, that we may have been going through a rough patch but we still loved each other so everything would be okay no matter what happened. All it took was the song coming on the radio or tape deck, and we'd hold hands and know what it meant.
Hard times is more about how your family is doing emotionally than how much money you have. Rich people can have hard times ("hard times is a daddy and a mother livin' in a mansion and hatin' each other") and poor or working-class people can have good times, even in an economic depression, if they stick together and love each other regardless off the desire for material goods or better food.
I grew up hearing this song since I was a young child, and my family always used it as a shorthand, on long car rides to see doctors that we weren't at all sure would cure anything or even treat the symptoms, that we may have been going through a rough patch but we still loved each other so everything would be okay no matter what happened. All it took was the song coming on the radio or tape deck, and we'd hold hands and know what it meant.