There’s no city here on Earth that has made a lasting effect on musicians quite like The Big Apple has inspired.
New York City serves as a grand stage where dreamers, artists, paupers, and moguls co-exist in a frenetic symphony of life.
The first seven #CityImages readers that email us in the next seven days the entire list naming seven songs will receive a free gift from us.
There are many songs about New York, but only a select few are timeless. We collect our favorite odes to the Big Apple. You’ll find anthems by New York icons ranging from Lou Reed to Jay-Z. There are Broadway showstoppers and dispatches from the birth of hip-hop. You’ll find disco, hardcore, pop, punk, jazz, and folk penned by outsiders and lifers alike. And if sticking all those genres and personalities together on one list about the same city seems a bit scattershot, well, you’ve clearly never taken a rush-hour subway across town.
There are films, major motion pictures movies, and novels along with classic books centered around the Big Apple, the best New York songs are by artists who understand the things that make NYC great and horrifying are one and the same. A great New York song is tapped into the rhythms of the city and well aware of the incredible wealth of human experience happening simultaneously across its expanse. They are songs of triumph and heartache, success and failure, love and loss.