Cause It s Christmas Time Again Lou Reed

For the past few weeks we've been locked in the basement at Yankee Stadium, subsisting on nothing merely Bergen Bagels, listening to the best songs about New York City through headphones endorsed by Lou Reed. Our mission: to come up with a list of the threescore best songs e'er written about our city, songs that best capture what it's like to live, honey, struggle, and exist in the sprawling, unforgiving, culturally dense metropolis nosotros pay too much to telephone call habitation. We started by like-minded on the songs we shouldn't include — naked and clunky stabs at new New York anthems that fall flat and band inauthentic, like Jay-Z's "Empire State of Mind," U2'south "New York," and Taylor Swift's "Welcome to New York." Instead, we focus on tracks that are so New York, and then skilful, they can't be denied. Hither they are. Mind to our Spotify playlist, which has most of the songs y'all'll read about beneath.

Contributors: Steve Almond, R.C. Bakery, Heather Baysa, Jack Buehrer, Jesus Diaz, Tom Finkel, Chaz Kangas, Mike Laws, Linda Leseman, Brian McManus, Albert Samaha, Alan Scherstuhl, Mike Seely, Brittany Spanos, Katherine Turman

threescore. Catey Shaw – "Brooklyn Girls" OK, you're right. The message inherent in Catey Shaw'southward "Brooklyn Girls" is tough to digest — that our love Brooklyn of yesteryear has forever inverse, that it has been whitewashed beyond recognition — but there's no denying that no other song out of New York this twelvemonth did a better job of describing u.s.a. to us. Because like it or not (and many choose the latter, understandably) this is what nosotros are now. Many of u.s. — especially in the parts of Brookyn Shaw is describing — are a bunch of navel-gazing art types here on someone else's money. If the song is insufferable, it's because that office of Brooklyn has go insufferable. And Shaw may be, as Vice described her, "the Rebecca Black of Brooklyn gentrification," but the fact is that she wouldn't exist had Vice not already done a majority of the legwork in turning once-industrial, blue-collar Williamsburg into a place for overpriced vinyl and cascade-over coffee. "Brooklyn Girls" is a comitragic, catchy-every bit-hell romp whose hook reels you in whether yous like it or non. The outrage about information technology is at best self-serving and at least misguided. You have to tune out to tune in to it. In that way, it's just like living in New York.

59. Rufus Wainwright – "14th Street" Rufus Wainwright'south 2003 album Want 1 is a lavish affair, rendering early postal service-millennial New York on a glorious operatic calibration, and "14th Street" is a gem of a song. An ailing soul on the brink of suicide takes the downtown divider line as the setting for a romantic walk that turns into a lost honey affair. Some of Wainwright'southward best lyrics tin be constitute in the chorus: "But why'd you have to break all my heart?/Couldn't you lot take saved a little bit of it?" It'south plaintive and tragic and utterly scenic in the grand sweep of orchestrations as immense equally this "home of the dauntless and of the weak."

58. Cam'ron – "Welcome to New York City" At a fourth dimension when Roc-A-Fella was New York hip-hop'due south virtually visible entity, hip-hop fans looked to the house that Matriarch Dash built for an anthem post–ix-eleven. What we got: the immortal "Welcome to New York Urban center." Over a Only Blaze beat, Harlem's Cam'ron and Brooklyn'due south Jay-Z, along with fiery newcomer Juelz Santana, gave New Yorkers a galvanizing anthem to rebuild the rap community on. The track cemented the Just Blaze sound as i of the city'due south almost exciting, and Cam, Jay, and Juelz'south combined performances farther established them equally New York'due south near visible torch-carriers.

57. Jim Croce – "You lot Don't Mess Effectually with Jim" The tardily James Joseph Croce purveyed words of wisdom: "Yous don't tug on Superman's greatcoat/You don't spit into the wind/Y'all don't pull the mask off that old Lone Ranger." In Croce'due south repertoire is the particularly pointed "New York's Non My Abode," with personal, pained lyrics, but sans a memorable hook, while "You Don't Mess Around With Jim" is Croce at his height, singing a catchy niggling ditty about a hick Alabama puddle shark in the city where "Bowery'due south got its bums…." Listeners of a sure age recollect that the You Don't Mess Around With Jim LP spent 93 weeks on the charts, starting in 1972 (hitting No. 1 in 1974), while Croce himself was gone by 1973, the pop chronicler of pathos silenced in a aeroplane crash at the age of xxx.

56. The Pogues – "Fairytale of New York" The Pogues' 1987 paean to broken dreams in the Big Apple features Shane MacGowan at perhaps the soberest he's ever sounded, which is however three sheets closer to alcohol poisoning than you've e'er been. One of the cracking deplorable, alcohol-soaked Christmas ditties, MacGowan insists "Fairytale" was conceived after Elvis Costello, the band's producer at the time, bet them they couldn't make a successful holiday hit. But here we have information technology, a (perhaps needlessly) Yuletide-set duet nearly immigration to New York Metropolis and its eventual pitfalls when Lady Freedom's siren song leads you crashing into the unyielding rocks of Ellis Island. It's chock-total of endemically New York imagery like Sinatra, heroin employ, references to an "NYPD choir" (which does not exist), and falling in dearest on bitterly common cold street corners.

55. Public Enemy – "A Alphabetic character to the New York Post" While it could be rightly said that no Public Enemy song that hands over the verses to Flavour Flav is the best anything — "911 Is a Joke" aside — "A Letter to the New York Post" sees Flav and Chuck D at a place most New Yorkers have been at some point: entirely fed upward and wearied by the New York Fuckin' Post. And though Flav's lyrics tin make y'all wince (at i signal he rhymes "James Cagney" with "fagney" — c'mon, guy), the overarching sentiment of the song is one that rings true for every New Yorker whose morning time ritual includes gawking at the newspaper's needlessly mean headlines on newsstands every day: that, as Mr. Chuck elegantly puts it, the New York Post is "America's oldest continuously published daily slice of bullshit."

54. The French Connection soundtrack Released in 1971, The French Connection depicted grizzled New York cops chasing suave French dope peddlers — most famously in a Pontiac LeMans careering onto Brooklyn sidewalks beneath a runaway elevated railroad train. At the time, Gotham was as criminal offense-ridden in reality as onscreen, and in her review of the film Pauline Kael noted that the era's rowdy audiences fabricated going to the movies experience like "being at a prizefight or mini Altamont." Indeed, with frantic piano runs, strangled strings, horns braying louder than taxicabs, and fractured fourth dimension signatures, jazz trumpeter Don Ellis's title cut and moody scene-setters — "Hotel Chase," "Bugging Sal and Angie," "The Shot," "Frog One Is in That Room" — ostend Kael'southward cess that the "score practically lays you out all by itself."

53. Alice Cooper – "Big Apple Dreamin' (Hippo)" "Big Apple tree Dreamin' (Hippo)" appears on 1973's Muscle of Dearest, the last album recorded by the original Alice Cooper group. "Hippo" has been said to refer to the Hippopotamus club, formerly on East 62nd Street, merely just to exist sure, we asked the bass player, Dennis Dunaway. He says, "Yes, the group had gone to the Hippopotamus society," but " 'Hippo' was merely a quick title to identify what began as an instrumental idea. By the fourth dimension the lyrical thought came together, we were locked into calling the song 'Hippo.' " So at present you know.

52. Steve Forbert – "Yard Central Station, March xviii, 1977" The "New Dylan" tag is an unfair cantankerous to behave, only that's precisely the label singer-songwriter Steve Forbert carried when Nemperor Records dropped his debut, Alive on Arrival, in 1978. The anthology cover faintly echoed The Freewheelin' Bob of 15 years prior, minus a slushy properties and a shivering Suze Rotolo embrace. That's non baby-faced Forbert's fault. "Grand Central Station, March 18, 1977" is a 22-year-former from Meridien, Mississippi's God's-honest paean to coming in from the land. And even taken at face value, information technology delivers.

51. New York Dolls – "Subway Train" In this tune, the New York Dolls compare frustrated love with riding the subway, a parallel that should resonate with anyone who'southward been stuck underground in purgatorial limbo waiting for the train to motility. You really tin can't telephone call yourself a New Yorker until you lot've been trapped between stops for an hour or more. Alternatively, the lyrics could be interpreted as existence about commuting from i civic to some other to come across your pregnant other. Pro tip for NYC romances: Appointment someone who lives in your borough, else risk getting this vocal stuck in your head.

50. Paul Simon – "Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard" A catchy tune that cracked the pop charts off Paul Simon'due south self-titled first solo album, "Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard" boasts lyrics that have inspired all manner of interpretations. If you hit the Google difficult plenty, you lot tin can find Truman Capote appearing to conjecture that "Me and Julio" is nigh Simon and a schoolmate in the Bronx engaging in a homosexual relationship, much to Julio's mother's chagrin. Also: connections between "Rosie, the Queen of Corona" and rosie being a term that relates to masturbation and corona referring to the penis. A demo version released a decade agone should have put the lie to that, but hell, go alee and play with it awhile. Paul Simon grew upwardly in Queens, BTW.

49. Beastie Boys – "An Open Letter of the alphabet to NYC" To the five Boroughs (2004) was the commencement Beasties album following the September xi attacks and, for such a quintessentially New York group, the entire album's tribute to both hip-hop and their birthplace has been as lauded as information technology is underappreciated. While the surface-level hyper-specific homage to the nooks and crannies only a New Yorker would know is most strong in the album's "Open Letter to NYC," the rail/album's production being rooted in aureate-era electro-fueled early hip-hop offers a deeper ode for veteran heads of the genre.

48. Andrew W.Grand. – "I Love NYC" Every bit our readers already well know, Andrew W.K. is a deep, deep thinker. And where many of his Voice advice columns aim for your head and heart, his songs striking you square in the gut. "I Love NYC" bubbles with the kind of excitement and exuberance only a urban center like ours can inject, the kind of feel-expert shot of adrenaline you get to experience when all is going right for y'all in the urban center that never sleeps. Nosotros once watched Andrew perform the song on New Year's Eve at Irving Plaza, the whole crowd taking over the chorus, grin their dumb ecstatic heads off: "I dear/New York Urban center/OHHHHH YEAHHHH/NEW YORK City!"

47. Patti Smith – "Gloria" Van Morrison taught us how to spell the lady'southward proper noun, simply nosotros credit Patti Smith for making her a New Yorker. In 1976, in probably the best of the tune's many covers, Smith adjusted "Gloria" for the burgeoning CBGB crowd, adding the iconic opening "Jesus died for somebody's sins…but not mine." A lot about Gloria got grittier after she moved to Manhattan — Smith takes abroad all the polite innuendo, replacing it with more than-than-suggestive grunts and references to parking-meter humping. Everything is sped up — the vocal'due south speed-of-a-subway tempo likewise as Gloria's game every bit she arrives at the narrator's walk-up for a midnight tryst. With such an power to harness the free energy of a city in one late-night bootycall, when Smith "takes the large plunge" and wants to tell the world that she simply "ah-ah made her mine," she might as well be talking about stone 'n' curlicue itself.

46. Notorious B.I.G. – "Guaranteed Raw" "Brooklyn'southward Finest" may be the obvious choice, but nosotros're more fond of Biggie's boom-bap homage to rap'due south yesteryear, "Guaranteed Raw." On it, the "heavyset brother from Fulton Street" takes you through an average day in the life of "Bed-Stuy Brooklyn where this rapper was originated" — one that saw him "makin' money smokin' mics similar crack pipes," drinkin' Hennessy, and smoking a blunt or 2. Or three. Or four. "Live in action," Biggie ever was "guaranteed raw."

45. Tom Waits – "Downtown Train" Every now and then, back in the day, Tom Waits sat down and wrote a pop song. You have to wonder: Tom Waits? Writing a pop vocal? What does that look like? What does it feel like? Does information technology come naturally to him? Doesn't thing, actually. "Downtown Train" is as hooky every bit a Tom Waits vocal can be, and it conveys an feel that's immediately familiar to anyone who has ever ridden the subway and is capable of falling in dear, and of being lonely. You get the feeling Tom Waits has a big old sack full of low-rent similes in his closet that he tin can dig into whenever he wants. He's similar the Santa Claus of depression-rent similes. The thing is, they only seem cheap. They're actually the diamonds in the sidewalk.

44. Ramones – "53rd and 3rd" You really tin't get more than New York than the Ramones (and songs named afterward bodily intersections). We can't say whether Dee Dee's 1976 lament about a teenage rent boy working a notorious pickup corner to fuel his heroin habit was autobiographical, but let's face it, it was probably biographical for someone. In the Ramones' classic loud-and-fast style, the song explodes with the depraved energy of 1970s New York and the perverse conclusion of an enterprising junkie. The actual midtown intersection, by the way, is now boxed in by three high-rise office buildings with handsome courtyards, a Duane Reade, and a TD Depository financial institution. Simply polished every bit it is, that place volition never be clean.

43. The Clash – "Koka Kola" Imagine: 4 safety-pinned punks from blighted bleedin' England — and they're gonna outsource spleen to our sweet big apple? In 1979? Glass business firm, boys. Merely we'll notwithstanding give "Koka Kola" a pass, partly because it shows the Clash having ripened across "I'm So Bored With the U.S.A." 's straight-ahead broadsides into a rabble-rousing that was thoroughly more nuanced, incisive, and funny. (And all this evolution in a positively Beatlesque two years' fourth dimension.) "Koka Kola" is still a takedown, but it softens its blows by way of a sweet-sung chorus wherein the narrator cops to being no stranger to the coked-upwardly adman culture he aims to excoriate. Post–Wolf of Wall Street, it'southward still hard to say which impresses more: that the song sketches the Masters of the Universe, right downwardly to their snakeskin suits and alligator boots, this early in the game, or that the increasingly agitated patter of its verses so perfectly evokes their addled lifestyle. Eyes like pinballs and tongue like a fish, indeed.

42. Lou Reed – "New York Phone Chat" Is in that location any musician more New York than the late and beyond-bully Lou Reed? Probably non, because no other artist could so succinctly capture the centre-of-the-night phone conversations we hear and have around the city as he did in his Transformer song "New York Telephone Chat." Clocking in at an insanely swift 1:31, the ditty bounces and satirizes both the gossip and desire for the gossip that New Yorkers tin can overhear from their windows and on the streets 24 hours a twenty-four hours while also partaking in information technology on our own. In truthful Reed fashion, the song takes itself to a place of incomparable longing to hear these words from very particular people.

41. Harry Nilsson – "I Guess the Lord Must Be in New York City" When yous consider the hall-of-mirrors paradox that was Harry Nilsson, it makes sense that "Everybody's Talkin'," a vocal he sang but did not write, won him a Grammy later on director John Schlesinger chose information technology for the soundtrack to Midnight Cowboy, while "I Guess the Lord Must Be in New York City," a song the Brooklyn-born Nilsson wrote and sang, missed the cut. That'due south not to slight "Everybody'southward Talkin'," which suited the film'due south sad arc. Only with its upbeat lyrics and John Hartford–like banjo twang, "I Guess" would have led off the proceedings nicely. 1 can only wonder what Nilsson would've thought, had he lived to run into his composition prominently showcased in 1998's Y'all've Got Mail.

40. A Tribe Chosen Quest – "Check the Rhime" "Cheque the Rhime" is the vocal that introduced the St. Albans, Queens, hip-hop trio to the masses (a few months earlier "Scenario" would catapult them to stardom). Information technology too detailed their journey from budding artists on "the Boulevard of Linden" to i of the most inventive acts of the concluding several decades. They rhyme about perfecting their "fly routines on [Q-Tip's] cousin's cake" over meridian of deft sampling that seamlessly fuses jazz saxophonist Grover Washington Jr.'s "Hydra" with Average White Band's "Honey Your Life." In the process, they gave the suburbs their start taste of what they could await from the Tribe for the next decade. It's the rare early-'90s hip-hop track that holds up all these years later. It's on point. All the time.

39. The Kills – "What New York Used to Be" What's New York without a little retrospective cynicism? The Kills singer Alison Mosshart (from Florida) seems bellyaching in this vocal with the New Yorker trend to wax nostalgic most what "used to be." "Tell me how much ameliorate the atmospheric condition, c'monday," she chants as the song ends, "grass, show me how it used to be." Other things she mentions the city "used to exist" include "easy," "fun," "dreaming," "fame," "the city," "fast," and "low." Information technology seems a jab from the point of view of an unjaded newcomer toward longtime dwellers who gripe about a urban center that by nature is constantly changing.

38. Ol' Dirty Bastard – "Brooklyn Zoo" Ol' Dingy Bounder's zoo isn't a place you'd want to bring the kids. His Brooklyn is not one you'd venture into to purchase a high-end cheese from a specialty shop or have your mustache waxed past a guy in suspenders. No, his "Brooklyn Zoo" is 1 rife with the "blazon of pain yous couldn't even kill with Midol/Fuck effectually, get sprayed with Lysol." Increasingly, equally rents ascension, developers buy up vast swaths of the borough, and condos go upwardly, information technology'south a place many of its longtime residents no longer recognize. It just takes 1 spin of this ODB archetype (from his notwithstanding-incredible Return to the 36 Chambers: The Muddy Version) to exist reminded of what information technology used to exist, and, for better or worse, how precious it's get.

37. Woody Guthrie – "Jesus Christ" The year 2022 saw the release of My Name Is New York, Nora Guthrie's oral history/walking tour/songbook/chronicle of her father'south life and times — and prodigious output — in New York town. Woody Guthrie wrote a lot of songs that New York City figures in, well-nigh notably "This State Is Your State." He wrote a few songs that are 100 percent New York, but they aren't his best songs. 1 of his best songs, "Jesus Christ," is about…Jesus Christ. But it'due south also Guthrie's vision of how the globe goes around, how it has always gone around. The closing verse brings it home: "This song was made in New York Metropolis/Of rich homo, preacher, and slave/If Jesus was to preach what He preached in Galilee/They would lay poor Jesus in His grave."

36. Sonny Rollins – "The Bridge" In 1959, Sonny Rollins decided to have himself to the woodshed. Lamenting his perceived musical shortcomings, as well as his falling star amid jazz critics, he decided to retire. Merely he didn't. He stopped recording and performing, but never stopped practicing. He worked on his new sound at the crest of the Williamsburg Bridge and so as not to disturb the neighbors in his Lower E Side apartment. When he emerged from his exile 3 years later, he recorded a song chosen "The Bridge," which he put on his 1962 comeback album of the same proper name. Ironically, his style hadn't drastically inverse during his years on the bridge — the album was mostly a collection of standards. But the title runway was an original, inspired past the hundreds of hours he spent suspended betwixt Manhattan and Brooklyn. The song's centerpiece is a motif of ascending and descending interplay between Rollins and guitarist Jim Hall, which gives the record a sense of urgency we had nonetheless to hear from the Saxophone Colossus.

35. New York Dolls – "Trash" Some compare their lovers to flowers, others to sweets or a summertime's twenty-four hours. Hither in New York, we liken them to what we're about familiar with: trash. The New York Dolls' 1973 debut single doesn't mince words: "Please, don't you ask me if I honey you/'Cause I don't know if I do," asserts the e'er-ambiguous David Johansen, embodying a romantic indifference that'due south facilitated by a city where at that place's always another, always a better selection, as well as a simple, characteristically New York willingness to tell it similar it is. The vocal's subject could be male or female, gay or direct, a sex worker or a junkie, or maybe just your average centre director on a bad night. Doesn't matter, the narrator picks them up on the street and thus they are: trash. Bursting into the chorus right out of the gate, it'south by far the glammy proto-punk album's fastest and hardest hitting. The intoxication of a night in the metropolis, with its one thousand thousand random hookups waiting to happen, is barely independent as Johansen'due south lyrics race alongside Jerry Nolan's drums. This is what it sounds like when garbage glitters like golden.

34. Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five – "New York, New York" There'southward a reason Melle Mel'southward outstanding songwriting and ferocious mic presence have kept him mentioned in rap's all-time-greatest lists for over three decades now. At a time of zodiac signs and loud article of clothing, Mel was painting pictures of the very struggle that gave birth to rap music. "New York, New York" inverts the extravagance of the romanticized Big Apple, exposing the dystopian rat race that stigmatized the pre-Disney metropolis among outsiders who dared not speak of it. It's like shooting fish in a barrel to forget how avant-garde the act of rapping itself was in a world where the genre was but emerging, and Mel'due south inimitable manner helped testify what a unique perspective this assuming new medium could offer. Mel'southward down by police, and he knows his way effectually.

33. Ben Due east. King – "Castilian Harlem" Upper Manhattan's Spanish Harlem (in more gentrified parlance: Eastward Harlem) has inspired at least eight artists to song, including Paul Simon and Beirut, but it's Ben Due east. King's 1960 rendering of "Spanish Harlem" that's the most evocative. The talent is scary-expert: Written past Jerry Leiber and Phil Spector, and produced by the hitmaking duo of Leiber and partner Mike Stoller, Ben E. King's soulful tribute to a lovely lady "with optics as black as coal that look down in my soul" is an innocent aural love alphabetic character. With a trademark orchestral/horn figure in the middle and the Castilian guitar and marimba lending the Latin flair, the tune'due south timelessness is proven with dozens of covers. From Willy DeVille's terrific, raw version to a one-minute punk take past Bowling for Soup to Leon Russell's Cajun-spiced boogie instrumental rendition, the song shines — but it'south Ben East. King who owns information technology.

32. Ace Frehley – "New York Groove" Though it's KISS-torically the Spaceman'due south nigh-beloved solo vocal, this three-infinitesimal pop-stone gem was actually penned by songwriter and ex-Silver member Russ Ballard and initially recorded by British glam ring Hullo in 1975. At that place's a reason Ace Frehley's 1978 version on his solo tape was his biggest striking — information technology'southward a smashing, uplifting song, and perfect for Frehley. The impossible-to-resist stomp-along underpinnings driving the tune are topped with fittingly triumphant and Ace-like sentiments: "I feel and then proficient tonight…Who cares almost tomorrow?" When the vocal takes a one-half-stride upwardly at a minute in, the irresistible factor rises commensurately.

31. Lady Gaga – "Black Jesus + Amen Way" This edgy popular song was a bonus track on the special edition of Born This Way, and Gaga neatly tucks a subconscious meaning into the lyrics. Ostensibly, the tune follows the would-exist star's move from her native Upper West Side to the Lower E Side at age xix. But the imagery of a "Black Jesus," says Gaga, is a metaphor for being challenged to call up about the earth in an entirely new fashion — something she says she experienced when she moved downtown. And who amidst us hasn't had our worldview expanded past this urban center?

30. George Gershwin – "Rhapsody in Blueish" Attempt to imagine the opening montage of Woody Allen's Manhattan with anything other than "Rhapsody in Blue" playing over top of information technology. It'due south damn almost impossible. Only George Gershwin's masterpiece almost didn't happen. He was asked to write a concerto-inspired piece for a jazz concert being put together by bandleader Paul Whiteman, merely Gershwin was convinced he didn't accept enough time to complete the composition. He was eventually persuaded to accept on the project just 5 weeks earlier the piece was set to debut at Aeolian Hall in midtown. The unabridged composition came to him during a train ride from New York to Boston, only when information technology came time to debut the work during the February 12, 1924, concert, he still had notwithstanding to transcribe the song's iconic piano office — which he himself performed. He was forced to improvise, more than or less building the courage of the vocal as the operation went along.

29. Neil Diamond – "I Am…I Said" Neil Diamond might take lived in L.A. for a spell, but he didn't vest in L.A. Diamond knew this; that'south why he wrote "I Am…I Said," which was inspired by a spate of rock-lesser therapy sessions in the Urban center of Drunken Angels. The lyrics aren't equally nonsensical as they seem; he talks to chairs and compares himself to frogs, but that's what fucked-upwards people do. Diamond needed New York, something he made clear years later with his cinematic star turn in The Jazz Singer. "L.A.'s fine, simply information technology ain't home. New York'south domicile, but information technology ain't mine no more than." New York'southward not anyone's, really, but no New Yorker has peeled off the Apple tree's skin for as many Middle American women as Diamond. Love's on his rocks. Own't no surprise.

28. Cub – "New York Metropolis" In that location's lots to experience fuzzy about regarding Vancouver '90s cuddlecore clique Cub's ode to New York, the most adorable of which is probably that their announcement "everyone'due south your friend in New York City" was in reference to a pre-Giuliani NYC, which the video for the song lovingly captures. Too neat is the admirably silly take on the major landmarks, especially revering the Empire State Building every bit "where King Kong lives." Cub's attitude is that of either the best visitor or worst tourist, an outlook and so lovably affable, we can't assist but say, "Awwwwww."

27. Bobby Womack – "Across 110th Street" Written back when crossing into Harlem was still considered "a helluva tester," Bobby Womack's theme song to the 1972 blaxploitation classic Beyond 110th Street is a plea to ascension higher up one'south upbringing. Information technology'southward the confession of a gangster defenseless betwixt trying to "break out of the ghetto" and doing whatever he has to practice to survive in the ghetto. Womack describes, in great detail, the 1970s Harlem that many like to pretend still exists today. But really, with its lush cord arrangements and Philly soul groove, the song is a time capsule of both a sound and a New York that, for proficient or for bad, are long gone.

26. Gil-Scott Heron – "Madison Avenue" Aficionados will contend for "New York Metropolis," a joyous paean to the urban center'southward polyglot spirit that roves from tinkling piano jazz to a riot of timbale. Fair enough. Simply Gil Scott-Heron didn't merely love his hometown. He understood its brutal bustling heart, that vast avenue dedicated to selling tinseled dreams to a lonely nation. Fuck Don Draper, folks. Hell, fuck Don DeLillo. If you want the ultimate appraisal of America's truthful ideological upper-case letter, drop the needle on this funked-upwards classic, a song with enough groove to make Prince sound like a minor duke. Scott-Heron may be gone from this world, but his sly social critiques merely continue getting louder.

25. George Benson – "On Broadway" Like a lot of songs written earlier people started smoking bushels of pot and questioning authority, "On Broadway," originally popularized in the early '60s by the Drifters, was a tad too hostage and taut. That was before George Benson got his hands on information technology. A spectacularly versatile multi-instrumentalist and vocalizer who jumped genres with ease, Benson infused the track with soul, grit, glamour, and a supreme make of conviction (alternately known as "swagger") that attracted y'all to him — and NYC — similar a magnet. " 'Crusade I tin can play this hither guitar/And I won't quit till I'g a star on Broadway." Never for a second practise you doubt him — or the "proper name in lights" dreamscape that existed before Hollywood stars gobbled up plum stage roles (or high-rise condos) just to bolster their cred.

24. Bobby Rodriguez y La Compañia – "El Número 6" Before Rubén Blades, bandleader, there was Rubén Blades, songwriter. Blades's "Número half-dozen" was a huge hit in 1975 for the salsa band Bobby Rodriguez y La Compañia. The song is told from the point of view of a guy waiting a long, long time for the half dozen train on 116th Street; he's got to get home commencement and change into his party duds for a night out with his adult female. A train finally pulls in…merely it'southward the 4. The 6 train never comes. Our hero complains that the toll of a token is too loftier — and he has a indicate: The MTA bumped fares 43 percentage, from 35 cents to fifty, in September of '75.

23. Elton John – "Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters" In the early on 1970s, Elton John was on a whorl. He literally could non terminate making striking records, fifty-fifty when he tried (and he did endeavor. See "Rock, Crocodile"). When this incredible run brought John and lyricist Bernie Taupin to New York for the first time, it seemed inevitable that the two would take something to say about the city that both had long romanticized from afar. On one of his first nights in town, Taupin heard a gunshot outside of his hotel room. He thought of Ben E. Male monarch'due south song "Castilian Harlem" and immediately jotted downwards, "Now I know 'Spanish Harlem' are not just pretty words to say/I thought I knew, but now I know that rose trees never grow in New York City." They became the opening lyrics to i of John's most earnest, sad, and beautifully naive ballads. He has since described the song as 1 of his favorites that he's ever recorded.

22. Carnivorous Ox – "Dove" The early-2000s hugger-mugger hip-hop scene in New York offered a hyper-experimental take on the civilisation's foundations, with the location of the genre's birthplace giving these creations instant brownie. One of the best results came in the class of Cannibal Ox'south The Cold Vein. Vast Aire's lofty slam-poetry-esque flow combined with Vordul's subtle softspoken streetwise manner atop El-P's crunching synth-based blast-bap to perfectly capture where New York was. Closer "Pigeon" exemplifies the New York hustle, with the titular bird mirroring the city'southward human inhabitants. Fowl linguistic communication was never so wing.

21. Glen Campbell – "Rhinestone Cowboy" "Hustle's the name of the game" on the "dingy sidewalks of Broadway" in Glen Campbell'south signature hit–cum–nail in his career's coffin. He'southward tired of walking these streets, he sings, and he mopes that "nice guys" here get "washed away" — existential complaints no difficult-working Wichita lineman would have fourth dimension for. Only Campbell's narrator here nevertheless holds to a dream: Somehow, for some reason, the lights are going to smooth on him, and he'll exist riding a horse, and he'll exist shellacked over in glittery costume jewelry. The song's jumbo success proves this whining character's no mere dreamer — if annihilation, information technology's a tribute to the fact that one mode to brand information technology in the only American city that counts is to create something then shitty and gaudy and impaired that the residual of the country tin can't resist it.

20. Beastie Boys – "No Sleep Till Brooklyn" Brooklyn'southward influence is all over everything the Beastie Boys produced together, just naught is quite as affecting as their lovely ode to the borough, appropriately titled "No Sleep Till Brooklyn." Almost 30 years after the release of the Rick Rubin–produced jam, the vocal is at present a tourist-y rite of passage for anyone who crosses any of the bridges out of Manhattan, with lyrics now visible in the captions to every friend'due south Bushwick warehouse party Instagram and last year's VMA promos. Somehow, none of that dampens the dial of Kerry King'due south guitar riffs and the lyrical gymnastics of these NYC boys.

19. Leonard Cohen – "First Nosotros Take Manhattan" As with any Leonard Cohen vocal, at that place are a million interpretations. Is this song about his career? Is information technology well-nigh terrorism? Information technology's up to the listener to parse Leonard's vague yet incisive poetry, commencement performed by Jennifer Warnes before the writer took a crack at it. With his vocals, Cohen brings the blazon of common cold industrialism necessary for the dark '80s tune. Of course, by this time, Cohen already had a pretty firm grip on Manhattan, having relocated to this isle to become a folk musician 20 years prior to the song's release.

18. Velvet Clandestine – "I'm Waiting for the Human being" An autobiographical tale of trekking to Harlem to score some heroin — "Twenty-half-dozen dollars in my paw/Upwardly to Lexington, one–2–5/Feelin ill and dirty, more expressionless than alive" — Lou Reed's 1967 "I'm Waiting for the Homo" comes complete with racial tension — "Hey white boy, what yous doin' uptown?" — and stylish dealers — "He's all dressed in blackness/PR shoes and a large straw lid." ("Puerto Rican fence-climbers" were pointy-toed footwear perfect for scaling chain-link while shaking off pursuing cops.) On the live album 1969, the Velvet Underground opened a crackling set in the hinterlands with this paean to dissolution, including an advertizement-libbed intro from Reed: "Pull upwardly your cushions — whatever else you have with y'all — that makes life bearable in Texas." Wherever he went, Lou never left his New York state of mind behind.

17. Simon & Garfunkel – "The Boxer" For a time after Simon & Garfunkel released "The Boxer," many listeners theorized that the song was a veiled chronicle of heroin addiction. It was actually a song about a New York artist — Paul Simon — who'd been taking a lot of shit about his music and was sick of information technology. The cut, which appeared on Bridge Over Troubled Water a yr afterwards its initial release equally a single ("Babe Driver" was the upbeat B side), is a production tour-de-forcefulness that includes a signature bass harmonica lick from the swell Nashville session man Charlie McCoy. How New York is it? When Simon and Garfunkel reunited on Saturday Night Live in 1975, they opened with "The Boxer." And when Simon appeared on the starting time SNL to air after 9-11, he sang "The Boxer" as beginning responders and Rudy Giuliani, that glory whore, looked on.

16. Run-D.1000.C. – "Christmas in Hollis" Information technology's their goofiest song by far, but one that breathes New York in a way their classic cuts nearly Adidas, King Midas, ordering Big Macs at KFC, and all-around kingliness don't. "Christmas in Hollis" humanized Run-D.One thousand.C., turning them from fedora- and gold-rope-wearing gods atop hip-hop's e'er-influential mountain into a few guys who, like you, allowed themselves to be taken in by a fiddling fleck of Christmas cheer. What'southward more, it introduced us to where they were from, Hollis, Queens, a place that thankfully rhymes with "Mom's cooking chicken and collard greens."

15. Vernon Duke – "Fall in New York" Like many jazz standards, Vernon Knuckles'south 1934 paean to, well, fall in New York, is 1 that has no real definitive version. Information technology's been recorded more than than 200 times, as both an instrumental and with lyrics, and by artists as diverse as Billie Holliday (probably your best bet), Sun Ra, and The Dudley Moore Trio. Although many of the sung versions contain their own interpretation of the lyrics, each drives home the same message — New York City between the stop of a sultry, unlivable summer and an fifty-fifty more than detestable winter is almost equally damn near perfect equally information technology gets in the Big Apple. And if you're in the process of falling in love, or even just going out on a first date…I mean, where would you rather do it? Los Angeles?

14. Interpol – "NYC" Even a decade afterward its release, yous'd still exist difficult-pressed to find anyone who really knows what "Subway, she is a porno" ways, merely there is a kind of hazy plod to Interpol's "NYC" that does perfectly exemplify the everyday life of many a working New Yorker: those $.25 of your commute where you go along your head down, downshift into autopilot, and strap on your mental and emotional armor for the battle you notice daily in the rat-race capital. Lead singer Paul Banks has always had trouble with clarity in his lyrics, only nosotros get — nay, feel — what he'southward maxim on nearly of "NYC." These pavements, they are a mess; every New Yorker does wearable "seven faces"; and, at some bespeak, you'll find yourself "Ill of spending these lonely nights/Preparation [your]self not to care."

xiii. Ramones – "Rockaway Beach" The Ramones might be the Embankment Boys of New York, at least on this song. All that's missing is the falsetto. Bass actor Dee Dee Ramone sings the truth: "Information technology'south not far, non hard to reach/Nosotros tin can hitch a ride to Rockaway Beach." Y'all tin can, in fact, take any number of buses to the Rockaways in Queens for a pleasant summer getaway from the urban center. Some parts of the beach are nicer than others, and no, it's not the Caribbean area, merely information technology beats sunbathing on your rooftop, right? If you're lucky, your passenger vehicle commuter won't "boom out disco on the radio" en road.

12. Joni Mitchell – "Chelsea Morning" Thanks to Joni Mitchell'south trademark lilting sunny vocals, signature audio-visual strumming, and lighter-than-air lyrical musings, "Chelsea Morn" is one of the well-nigh un–New York NY songs. The Canadian chanteuse sings of a late '60s wherein the city seems possessed of a kinder, gentler "milk, toast, and honey" mien; even traffic is melodic. Her paean to a modest personal moment on the city's Westward Side brims with welcoming sun, rainbows, and crystals; even pigeons seem enchanting. (And then much so that Hil & Bill Clinton named their offspring after the vocal.) Though Mitchell has plain dismissed her composition every bit a flake of a treacly, nascent effort, the sweetness jewel was covered by three artists — Judy Collins, Fairport Convention, and Jennifer Warnes — before Mitchell herself even released information technology.

xi. Frank Sinatra – "The Theme From New York, New York" C'monday!

10. Nas – "NY Land of Mind" There is a New York where the nights are jet-black. Where each block is similar a maze full of trapped rats. Where "the Island" doesn't hateful Manhattan, and from the stories of those returning home, "the Isle" is fifty-fifty more packed than Manhattan. Information technology's a New York of smoke-overnice rocks and bullet holes left in peepholes. It's a New York where fake dudes don't make it back. Information technology's a New York that never sleeps, 'cause sleep is the cousin of death. A dungeon, Nas calls information technology, and he guides us through this New York with his seen-it-all, just-the-facts, understated oratory, which slices through DJ Premier's menacing pianoforte-laced beat, dropping knowledge and wisdom and indoctrinating united states into the ways of this New York, injecting us with a New York State of Heed.

ix. Patti Smith – "Piss Factory" Yet over again, she'south screwin' upwards the quota. The best-known NYC songs are about how great you are for makin' it here ("New York, New York"), or how much hustle/discipline you evinced taking it over ("Empire State of Mind"). Patti Smith's "Piss Manufactory," though, is nigh dreaming of making it — both to New York and in New York. Over bristling and insistent guitar, piano, and bass, Smith's teenage protag spew-monologues well-nigh how a go-nowhere job won't proceed her from going someplace. She'll hop that railroad train, Jack, come to New York, and finally let loose what she's been belongings dorsum, the thing she knows she's got merely her factory-mates don't: desire. Like millions earlier and afterward her, she'south gonna get hither and get who she already secretly is — and perchance she'll have the hustle-discipline to get in.

8. Baton Joel – "New York State of Mind" Few songwriters are as intrinsically linked to New York as Bronx native Billy Joel, now the showtime "music franchise" at Madison Square Garden. The original version of "New York State of Mind" was not a single when information technology appeared on the album Turnstiles in 1976, but it's become an iconic tune both for Joel and for this city. Apart from the memorable melody and lyrics, the piano licks that accompany a blossoming sax solo requite the vocal a quintessentially New York jazz feel. Many, many artists take covered this classic, but in that location'southward something about the original version that never gets old, no affair how many times y'all've heard it.

seven. Garland Jeffreys – "Wild in the Streets" Garland Jeffreys recorded "Wild in the Streets" with swamp-boogie grand wizard Dr. John, just its hot-summer-cobblestone shell and back-alley-hiss chorus are NYC through and through — just similar Jeffreys himself. Built-in in Brooklyn in the 1940s, half black and half Puerto Rican, he went to college with Lou Reed and was an early protégé of John Cale. His stone-, soul-, and reggae-inflected albums brought him a mensurate of acclaim in the tardily 1970s, only fifty-fifty back so Jeffreys was an underrated and underappreciated homegrown virtuoso. Though information technology was cut in 1973, "Wild in the Streets" didn't make information technology onto an anthology for another 4 years. That's fine in retrospect, because as a slice of New York life it has proven timeless. Await at information technology this style: If you go into a jukebox bar in this town and Garland Jeffreys ain't on the jukebox, plough around. Yous're in the incorrect bar.

half dozen. Rolling Stones – "Shattered" In the 36 years since the Stones' seminal love letter to/indictment of the city, precious little has inverse: "To alive in this boondocks yous must exist tough, tough, tough, tough, tough!/Yous got rats on the west side/Bedbugs uptown." Mick Jagger hit it on the head with his lyrical observations, the Blink Twins creating a muddy, bouncy urgency that pairs perfectly with the snapshot of the divisive decadence and difficulty that was New York in the late '80s. To wit: "Bite the Big Apple tree, don't mind the maggots." Quite perchance the only rock song to use the word schmatta, "Shattered" 'south lyrics are spot-on in their pointed observations, snottily talk-sung by Jagger. Possibly Mayor de Blasio tin can employ a lyric as the city's motto: "Pride and joy and greed and sex/That's what makes our town the best."

v. Knuckles Ellington – "Have the 'A' Train" Whether you know it or not, you've heard "Have the 'A' Train" hundreds of times. When you're watching any moving picture that takes place in the 1940s or '50s, chances are there will be a scene where the signature melody of the Knuckles Ellington Orchestra is playing in the groundwork. It'due south probably the first song that comes to mind when y'all remember of swing-era New York Metropolis. Though it was written by longtime Ellington collaborator Billy Strayhorn, the vocal will forever exist associated with the Knuckles. It has lyrics (the A railroad train is how you get to Harlem, in case you were wondering), and some of the greatest jazz vocalists accept recorded and performed it, simply the instrumental versions — with the woodwinds driving the melody — are the most easily recognizable. If you want to hear the lyrics, Ella Fitzgerald's estimation is the benchmark. Information technology'south worth your time for the scatting alone.

four. The Jim Carroll Ring – "People Who Died" If you alive in New York and oasis't read Jim Carroll'due south memoir The Basketball Diaries, shame on you lot. If you saw the movie starring Leonardo DiCaprio and oasis't read the book, shame on you twice. Carroll was a longtime downtown darling when he released his debut LP in 1980, but Catholic Boy remains a punk classic 35 years on, and "People Who Died" is its pièce de résistance. A litany of casualties from Carroll's real-life youth — the son of a bar owner, he was a hoops prodigy who discovered verse and heroin while on scholarship to Trinity Schoolhouse — the three-chord vocal bristles with tragic élan. Did all those kids perish every bit Carroll sings that they did? The book and our money say yes, merely it'southward too late to quiz the source. In 2009 Jim Carroll died of a heart set on at age 60, and NYC is much the poorer.

3. Le Tigre – "My Metrocard" This peppy takedown of Giuliani ("He's such/A fucking jerrrrk") and the sterile New York he created is Kathleen Hanna at her spirited all-time: political, yep, but also fun, energetic. She was new to the urban center when she and her first mail-Bikini Impale ring, Le Tigre, wrote it, fresh from a cross-country movement from the Pacific Northwest, and in her voice y'all can hear the kind of broad-eyed excitement all new transplants possess before they've been beaten down by the daily grind. Live here awhile and your MetroCard becomes a chore, something else to add to the pile of things you take to maintain. But in "My My Metrocard" it's the cardinal to a city Hanna is eager to explore, and the self-congratulatory dance we all do once we've started to figure out the subway organization. "NEXT Terminate Atlantic Avenue/NEXT Cease Christopher Street/NEXT End Transfer to the/Next STOP A, C, or E."

two. Bob Dylan – "Visions of Johanna" Someone ought to brand a map that details all the places Bob Dylan has sung about. Oh, wait — someone already did (http://bit.ly/bob-dylan-map). Dude really gets effectually, songwriterly speaking, and there's a lot of NYC on that map. One or two Dylan songs are New York–specific (roasted chestnuts like "Hard Times in New York Town" and "Talkin' New York" come to heed); others ("Joey"; "Hurricane" if you stretch the boundaries) are explicitly set here. There's the famously vitriolic "Positively quaternary Street" — which, interestingly, makes absolutely no mention of New York beyond its title — and songs that pinpoint places (the Chelsea Hotel, Elizabeth Street, M Street). But no Dylan song evokes this city the way "Visions of Johanna," released on Blonde on Blonde, does. The Dylan-mapmakers excluded the vocal — or perchance overlooked it — presumably because the sole explicit reference isn't a identify, per se, only a subway line: "the all-nighttime girls they whisper of escapades out on the D train." That's just as well. A song almost disillusionment and loss, "Johanna" is less a geographic coordinate than an exquisitely executed painting of lonesome city winter, masquerading every bit a seven-and-a-half-minute melody.

1. Stevie Wonder – "Living for the Metropolis" The hardest-edged hit this fa-la-la-ing superstar ever dared, "Living for the City" finds Wonder at his nearly Muppety gruff, shouting tough truths (and iffy rhymes) over warm, mounting synths and a backbeat that lurches and starts like the old Eighth Avenue Independent. The single edit trims the playlet at the song's middle, which briskly treats the Great Migration and the North'south institutionalized racism in less than a minute — within 10 seconds of arriving in New York, the song's hero is locked upwardly by racist cops. Merely because Wonder's an optimist/melodist/genius, the hardness blooms once more and once more into what might be his greatest musical inspiration: those ribbons of glorious synth afterward each verse, hardy every bit sidewalk flowers but airy and galactic equally aurora borealis. That'south how Wonder sees the world, with incommunicable hoping illuminating the darkest visions.

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Meet also: The 50 Most NYC Albums E'er The Oral History of NYC's Metallic/Hardcore Crossover The Peak 20 NYC Rap Albums of All Time: The Complete List

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Source: https://www.villagevoice.com/2014/11/18/the-60-best-songs-ever-written-about-new-york-city/

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