There are plenty of songs that sing the praises of the location that they’re about, like “New York. New York” or “I Left My Heart in San Francisco.” What songs are there that are the opposite? IE, songs that make you not want to visit the place?
“The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia” comes to mind.
Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young’s “Ohio” probably wasn’t particularly good for tourism.
Carry me back to old Virginny/Virginia. Racist as Hell. And quite representative of the place where I spent more than a few of my growing up years.
Its replacement song Our Great Virginia because the lyrics just plain suck. On top of that is the silent racism. The writer felt the need to divide the population into farm and city dweller, but God forbid he explicitly state people of color are actually Virginians.
“Dirty Water” by the Standells is about how, well, dirty and run-down Boston is and how disreputable the people there are, and the narrator is implied to be the Boston Strangler.
Our State song of Oklahoma talks about how much the wind blows more than anything else.
Billy Joel doesn’t make Allentown sound like much of a place to live. Allentown - YouTube.https://youtu.be/BHnJp0oyOxs
Some of the lyrics haven’t aged well, but a song that gets you kicked off SNL can’t be all bad.
Video can’t be played.
Try this.
“Thrice All American” by Neko Case is another one, about how Tacoma is a run-down, used-up, battle-worn place that doesn’t even have a Walmart yet… that she’s glad she finally got away from but loves it with all her heart. She refuses to perform it live outside of Pierce County.
This is the one that sprang to my mind. Many people thing it’s about Dublin as The Dubliners and The Pogues both covered it, but it’s actually an English folk song set in the industrial grime of Salford, just outside Manchester (England).
Although I’m not sure people from Salford find it insulting as opposed to relateable.
“This town’s full of money grabbers
Go ahead, bite the Big Apple, don’t mind the maggots”
The Rolling Stones, “Shattered” (1978)
“If you want to go to hell, just take a trip / To the Sodom and Gomorrah of the Mississip’”
Tom Lehrer’s brief but trenchant ode to Boston:
Saturday Night In Toledo, Ohio by John Denver
And then there’s Randy Newman, “Baltimore”.
Not exactly a full-throated endorsement of Charm City’s charms
Don’t know how to embed the video, but…
“Stuck in Indianapolis” by the Bottle Rockets
