What’s your favorite song that is about where you live? Bonus points if your town is mentioned in the title.
Mine is Portland Woman, by New Riders Of The Purple Sage(1969).
Rock Island Line. No link because I’m at work. Will provide later.
That’s a goody! I was going to post the original version, the skiffle version (yours), than the Beatle version!
There are no song smaller than the state level for me. If you count both South and North Carolina together, though, I like James Taylor’s Carolina on My Mind. (Much more compelling than Sandlappers, Nothing Can Be Finer.)
Dirty Water by the Standells.
That’s a tough one.
My favorite song about the South in general is probably All I Can Do Is Write About it by Skynyrd.
More specifically Alabama, gotta go with My Home’s in Alabama.
I’m lucky enough to have a song about my specific neighborhood: Lincoln Park Pirates by Steve Goodman.
When I lived in Seattle the theme song to “Here Come The Brides” was a favorite of mine.
I heard that done by Frank Hayes at a convention many years ago.
Tony Bennett, “I Left My Heart In San Francisco”
Tom Waits- Christmas Card from a Hooker in Minneapolis I live just outside, but close enough.
‘Bohemian Like You’ by the Dandy Warhols never explicitly says it’s about Portland, but it’s totally about Portland. And an awesome song.
For where I grew up, (Don’t Go Back to) Rockville - R.E.M., written by Mike Mills as a plea to his then girlfriend to not leave school and return to Rockville, Maryland. Great tune, but very amusing to me as Mills clearly either had a completely made-up version of Rockville in his head or the GF had given him a wildly inaccurate portrayal of her hometown. In fact, having been to both places, I feel like Athens, GA and Rockville, MD are not really all that different. And as far as I know, there are no, nor have there ever been, any factories in Rockville.
God damn it. I was trying to think of a song for Toronto. I am ashamed to say it took longer than 3 seconds for me to come up with YYZ.
I’ll see your James Taylor and raise you the Chairmen of the Board.
I don’t know of any about my specific city but Tom Petty’s Casa Dega is a pretty good song about an interesting place in this not so interesting state.
Sadly, the most well know song about Florida is Stephen Foster’s Old Folks at Home (wayyyyy down upon the Suwanee River)
White Boy From Sacramento by Timothy B. Shmidt
But to be fair, it’s the only song that’s explicitly about living in Sacramento I’m aware of.
There’s also Cake’s Arco Arena (I live down the street from Arco) but I’m not sure it counts.
Of course the lyrics make it a little hard to be used as a civic pride thing.
My fav about where I live is Praga Khan - Breakfast In Vegas. I made a killer ringtone from it that I use for a friend of mine who was born here and had never really left the valley until he was 23 years old.
I was not born here, however, and if ya’ll will indulge me, my favorite song about my hometown is It Sprinkled, It Rained, and It Poured by John and Marina Nickerson. I lost my copy to use and damage decades ago and was thrilled to find this online some years back.