"Workingman's Blues #2" is a song written and performed by American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan, released as the sixth track on his 2006 album Modern Times. As with much of Dylan's 21st-century output, he produced the song himself under the pseudonym Jack Frost. Composition and recording In spite of the song's title, it is not a blues but rather a folk song that uses the same chord pattern as Pachelbel's Canon. Dylan scholar and musicologist Eyolf Ostrem notes that "[m]usically, it is a close cousin of "'Cross the Green Mountain" with which it shares the ever-descending bass line and some of the chord shadings that never manage to decide whether they're major or minor (and which minor they are!)". The song is performed in the sounding key of A major. In their book Bob Dylan All the Songs: The Story Behind Every Track, authors Philippe Margotin and Jean-Michel Guesdon describe the song, lyrically, as "another example of Dylan's art of creating a song from different pieces, like a puzzle, playfully following his inspiration" and note that the song quotes both American Civil War poet Henry Timrod and country music singer Merle Haggard. Critical reception Patrick Doyle, writing in Rolling Stone, where the song placed 23rd on a list of "The 25 Best Bob Dylan Songs of the 21st Century", refers to it as a "sequel" to the 1969 country hit "Workin' Man Blues" by Merle Haggard, with whom Dylan had toured the year before he recorded Modern Times. Doyle characterizes the song as being told from the point of view of a narrator who surveys "bruised relationships and lost battles", and calls it a "hidden gem". In their book Bob Dylan All the Songs: The Story Behind Every Track, authors Philippe Margotin and Jean-Michel Guesdon describe it as a "ballad with a melody of great subtlety" with lyrics that are "much more profound" than Haggard's and cite it as "one of the high points of the album". Spectrum Culture included the song on a list of Dylan's "20 Best Songs of the '00s". In an article accompanying the list, critic Ian Maxton sees the song as one of Dylan's most explicitly political: "At a time when the poor and working classes are as diverse as they’ve ever been in this country – and perhaps as powerless as they’re ever been – the song’s powerful closing lines do something more effective than