Insulting places is a genre also played in other countries. Brandenburg, by Rainald Grebe, is one single, long, dissonant insult to the Bundesland that surrounds Berlin. Twenty years later most of it is still true-ish.
Yeah, but try to make a song out of that!
Never mind, on second thought I think it could work…
Stuck in Winnemucca
Just my awful luck-a
Talking about The Pogues, Shane MacGowan had it in for quite a lot of places.
The Old Main Drag is about sex work in London,
and Fairy Tale of New York is pretty scathing about that city, which is ‘no place for the old’ (apparently).
I see the person who put the lettering on that vehicle is a graduate of the Lubbock school system.
Flew over it umpteen times and gazed down at the dispiriting nothingness. Been at the airport a time or three which is also dispiriting nothingness. Never made it into town. Thank goodness.
The closest I’ve been out on my own on the ground was Amarillo or Midland. And they were each bad enough.
Southern Man, and Alabama, both by Neil Young. In response, Lynyrd Skynyrd wrote Sweet Home Alabama.
Shane also didn’t have a great time in Germany. From “The Sickbed Of Cúchulainn”:
When you pissed yourself in Frankfurt and got syph down in Cologne
So, you’re telling us you’ve been everywhere?
I was totin’ my pack along the dusty Winnemucca road
When along came a semi with a high an’ canvas-covered load
“If you’re goin’ to Winnemucca, Mack, with me you can ride”
And so I climbed into the cab, and then I settled down inside
He asked me if I’d seen a road with so much dust and sand
And I said, “Listen, I’ve traveled every road in this here land”
This song was written by Randy Sparks after his own band had a bad (boring) night there.
Sorry! Thanks for editing.
Uneasy Rider by Charlie Daniels has:
Now the last thing I wanted was to get into a fight
In Jackson Mississippi on a Saturday night…
I think I’m gonna re-route my trip
I wonder if anybody’d think I’d flipped
If I went to LA via Omaha!
The Weavers live up the street from me
The crackheads, they live down the street from me
Shit Towne by Live is about growing up in York, PA.
“Born In The USA” is kind of not that complimentary about the USA.
“Little Pink Houses”, I’m not sure who or where that’s about, but it doesn’t seem very complimentary. There’s an interstate running through the front yard, they eat slop in the evening, there’s a lot of pills and stuff.
Likewise “Little Boxes,” which never mentions a specific locale, but was inspired by Daly City, California.
What about India-No Place (A Light in the Cornfield)?
That’s insulting Indianapolis pretty seriously. Of course the song doesn’t exist yet but I may still write it someday.
And don’t forget that… “There’s More than Corn in Indiana!” (yes it’s true. There are also soybeans).
Hackensack, N.J. does not come off well in the Fountains of Wayne song of the same name, about a young man dreaming of a girl who left town and made it big in L.A.:.
I used to work in a record store
Now I work for my dad
Scraping the paint off the hardwood floors
The hours are pretty bad
There’s a great Fountain of Wayne song ‘New Routine’, about people picking up stakes and going to far-flung locales to escape boredom.
“I’m so, I’m so sick of this place
I’m ready for a change of pace”
Among the places they escape from are Mineola, N.Y. and, bizarrely, Liechtenstein.
But there’s not much going on except for banking and skiing
REM wants to make damn sure we don’t waste another year in Rockville.
Going where nobody says hello, they don’t talk to anybody they don’t know
And
You’ll wind up in some factory that’s full-time filth and nowhere left to go
And
But everybody else in town only wants to bring you down and that’s not how it ought to be
In reality, Rockville is a perfectly fine upper middle class suburb with good schools.
One Interesting thing is that, despite the title, It’s much more commonly known in the U.K. and Ireland than in the U.S.
Another one from the Boss ; My City of Ruins
There’s a blood red circle on the cold dark ground
And the rain is falling down
The church door’s thrown open, I can hear the organ’s song
But the congregation’s gone
“Only 45 Minutes from Broadway,” an old George M. Cohan song poking fun at the yokels who live in New Rochelle, NY.
Stevie Wonder doesn’t exactly paint a flattering picture of Mississippi in “Living for the City”.
A boy is born in hard time Mississippi
Surrounded by four walls that ain’t so pretty
His parents give him love and affection
To keep him strong, moving in the right direction
Living just enough, just enough for the city