*Title inspired by a Songs of the City concert held at the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles in January 2008
I’m kicking off 2010 with a list of my ten best songs that describe life in the city. Most lists of city songs contain songs with the name of a city in the title, such as London Calling by the Clash (or Streets of London by Ralph McTell), New York, New York by Frank Sinatra (or Liza Minnelli or Moby), and Sweet Home Chicago by Robert Johnson (or Eric Clapton or Peter Green). There are already many such lists. The best one I have come across is compiled by Eric Riback (a monster list of over 500 city songs, containing gems such as Fort Lauderdale Chamber of Commerce by Elvis Presley, Born in East L.A.by Cheech and Chong, Hong Kong Book of Kung Fu by Cornershop, Jesus Just Left Chicago by ZZ Top and The Cockroach That Ate Cincinnati by Possum, although missing at least a hundred more, including Chicago/ We Can Change the World by Crosby, Stills and Nash, Fake Tales of San Francisco by the Arctic Monkeys, King of New York by the Fun Lovin’ Criminals, London Sux by the Rudimentals, Johannesburg by the Julian Laxton Band and Cape Town by the Rockets).
However, I am more interested in songs, drawn from various music genres, which capture diverse aspects of city life: love, freedom, isolation, struggle, celebration, in other words, bright lights and dark alleys.
So here goes, in no particular order:
Summer in the City
The Lovin’ Spoonful
“Hot town, summer in the city, back of my neck getting dirty and gritty”
A personal favourite, I used to listen to McCully Workshop playing this at the Canterbury Inn at the Fairmead Hotel in Rondebosch, Cape Town, in the late ‘70s. Also reminiscent of sitting on the pavement outside a popular club called Scratch on warm summer nights during the early ‘80s.
Summer in the City was a hit for John Sebastian and the Lovin’ Spoonful in 1966. The Flying Pickets did a pretty good cover version, as did BB King, Quincy Jones, Joe Cocker and Joe Jackson.
Summer in the City - The Lovin' Spoonful
Downtown
Petula Clark
“When you’re alone and life is making you lonely
You can always go – downtown”
A big hit for Petula Clark in 1964, Downtown featured a young Jimmy Page as a session guitarist! I remember travelling with my mother as a young boy in 1966 to hear her cousin Angus Kennedy, lead singer of the Belaires, belt out a version of Downtown at the Mazoe Hotel in Zimbabwe. The B-52s recorded a very different punk version of Downtown in 1978.
The term “downtown” originated in New York in the 1830s, where downtown referred to the original settlement at the southern tip below Wall Street and uptown to the expanding new city to the north. Since then, it has come to refer to the traditional urban core or historical central business district of (mainly) North American cities, often with pejorative connotations of urban decay, homelessness and poverty, and business and residential flight to the suburbs or edge cities.
Downtown - Petula Clark
The Message*
Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five
“It’s like a jungle sometimes it makes me wonder
How I keep from going under”
Released as a single in 1982, The Message is often referred to as one of the greatest hip-hop records ever made. The song’s chorus of “Don’t push me ’cause I’m close to the edge/ I’m trying not to lose my head” has become one of the most well known choruses in rap music history and the signature synthesizer riff has been sampled many times since. The song speaks of the frustrations of young black people living in the ghettos. As a reviewer in Rolling Stone magazine said at the time: “This seven-minute single, the apotheosis of black rap music, is the most detailed and devastating report from underclass America since Bob Dylan decried the lonesome death of Hattie Carroll – or, perhaps more to the point, since Marvin Gaye took a long look around and wondered what was going on.”
The Message - Grandmaster Flash
*Thanks to Kimon de Greef for this entry
Ghost Town
The Specials
“This town, is coming like a ghost town
All the clubs have been closed down”
Ghost Town was written in 1981 as a protest against the policies of Thatcherism in Britain, particularly in terms of the impact on the youth of the cities in the British north and midlands. The Specials, a 2 Tone ska revival band, hailed from Coventry which was experiencing particularly high unemployment during this period. The Specials had been part of the Rock Against Racism movement in the UK and Jerry Dammers of The Specials would go on to write the anti-apartheid anthem Free Nelson Mandela a few years later.
Ghost Town - The Specials
Inner City Blues
Rodriguez
“Met a girl from Dearborn, early six o’clock this morn, a cold fact
Asked about her bag, suburbia’s such a drag, won’t go back”
Remember Rodriguez, the singer-songwriter from Detroit, USA, more popular in South Africa and Australia than in his own country? Remember Cold Fact, the album that launched a thousand joints?
As Georgie Hirezola sums it up in his blog: “It’s one of the lost classics of the 60s, a psychedelic masterpiece drenched in colour and inspired by life, love, poverty, rebellion, and, of course, jumpers, coke, sweet mary jane… It’s crushingly good stuff, filled with tales of bad drugs, lost love, and itchy-footed songs about life in late 60s inner-city America”. And Inner City Blues has a nice dig at suburbia…
Cold Fact - Rodriguez
Downtown Train
Tom Waits
“Will I see you tonight
on a downtown train
every night is just the same
you leave me lonely now”
Tom Waits has always been one of my favourite singers, and this song, taken off his classic 1985 Rain Dogs album, conveys all the loneliness and longing of the big city. Rolling Stone magazine called it Waits’ “finest portrait of the tragic kingdom of the streets”. Rod Stewart recorded a great cover version four years later, with great guitar work from Jeff Beck.
Rain Dogs - Tom Waits
Uptownship
Hugh Masekela
I love the play on the words “uptown” and “township”. This is an instrumental by one of South Africa’s greatest musicians, Hugh Masekela, celebrating life in the townships.
First released on his album Uptownship in 1988, at the height of the struggle against the apartheid regime and during the state of emergency which saw the detention of 20 000 activists, a live version was released on the appropriately-titled Hope album in 1993.
Uptownship - Hugh Masekela
Living for the City
Stevie Wonder
“I hope you hear inside my voice of sorrow
And that it motivates you to make a better tomorrow
This place is cruel nowhere could be much colder
If we don’t change the world will soon be over
Living just enough, just enough for the city!”
Living for the City was a 1973 hit for Stevie Wonder from his Innervisions album. An angry song, it describes what happens to a young black man who arrives in the big city and encounters poverty and racism.
Living for the City - Stevie Wonder
City Life
Roy Orbison
“Coffer cafe’s dizzy with city lights, concrete sidewalks busy with friendly fights
But that’s alright baby, it’s alright come go with me and you will see city life, city life”
Not a very well known song, City Life appeared on the 1966 album The Classic Roy Orbison. I love its whimsical lyrics, especially the line “Come on, come on now, we can have a good time/ This town ain’t much unless you’re here with me”.
The Classic Roy Orbison - Roy Orbison
City of Immigrants
Steve Earle
“Livin’ in a city of immigrants
I don’t need to go travelin’
Open my door and the world walks in
Livin’ in a city of immigrants”
Steve Earle, playing here with the Brazilian group Forro in the Dark, reminds us that many cities are built, physically and culturally, by immigrants. Taken from his 2007 Grammy award-winning Washington Square Serenade album, it is particularly apposite in an era of growing xenophobia in many cities. As Steve says:
“City of black, city of white, city of light, I’m livin’ city of immigrants
[All of us are immigrants, every daughter, every son]
City of sweat, city of tears, city of prayers, livin’ in a city of immigrants
[Everyone is everyone, all of us are immigrants]
City of stone, city of steel, city of wheels, livin’ in a city of immigrants
[All of us are immigrants, every daughter, every son]
City of bone, city of skin, city of pain, city of immigrants”
Washington Square Serenade - Steve Earle
Waterloo Sunset
Ray Davies/ The Kinks
“Dirty old river, must you keep rolling
Flowing into the night
People so busy, makes me feel dizzy
Taxi light shines so bright
But I don’t need no friends
As long as I gaze on Waterloo sunset
I am in paradise”
No list of songs about city life would be complete without Ray Davies’ classic Waterloo Sunset, released in 1967 (Yes, you counted correctly, this is number eleven in a list of ten, but I simply couldn’t leave it out!). It conveys the views of a solitary man imagining the romantic encounters of a couple crossing Waterloo Bridge in London, a great example of narrative song writing.
Something Else - The Kinks
Bubbling under…
Some of the songs that nearly made my list include:
- Strange Town by Paul Weller and The Jam (“You can’t be weird in a strange town/ You’ll be betrayed by your accent and manners”)
- Inner City Blues (Make Me Wanna Holler) by Marvin Gaye (“Rockets, moon shots/ Spend it on the have nots/ Money, we make it/ Fore we see it you take it”)
- Bright Lights, Big City by Jimmy Reed (“Bright lights, big city/ Gone to my baby’s head”)
- Let’s Clean Up The Ghetto by The Philadelphia International All-Stars (“You know/ I was in New York City a few months ago/ And the garbage and the trashmen were on strike”)
- Sin City by The Flying Burrito Brothers (“This old town is filled with sin/ It’ll swallow you in”)
- Building Downtown (Antichrist Television Blues) by The Arcade Fire (“Don’t wanna work in a building downtown/ No, I don’t wanna see it when the planes hit the ground”)
- Sounds of Silence by Simon and Garfunkel (“And the signs said the words of the prophets are written on the subway walls/ And tenement halls”)
- Crosstown Traffic by Jimi Hendrix (“Crosstown traffic/ All you do is slow me down/ And I’m tryin’ to get on the other side of town”)
- Take the A Train by Duke Ellington
- Blasting through the City by Thievery Corporation (“War keep blasting the city tonight/ Love assassinated in broad daylight”)
- City of Blinding Lights by U2 (“Oh you look so beautiful tonight/ In the city of blinding lights”)
- City Life by the Casualties (New York punk group formed 1990 – “City life is boring/ City life’s a waste of time”)
- Big City Life by Mattafix (a hit single for the UK duo in 2005, also used on the soundtrack of the video game FIFA World Cup Germany 2006 – “Big city life, me try fi get by/ Preasure nah ease up”)
- City Life by Stroke 9 (alternative rock band formed in San Francisco in 1989 – “This city life is dragging us down/ Don’t push me”).
Strawberry Fields, Central Park, NYC, September 2007
Copyright & Copy 2009 Andrew Boraine