Two years after leaving the Velvet Underground, Lou Reed released 'Walk On The Wild Side' on his second album Transformer, produced by Bowie and Mick Ronson. – Dan Condon Lou Reed – 'Walk On The Wild Side' To top it off, Gershwin is as much of a New York icon as anyone. Listen to it loudly with your eyes closed and you're hustling through a busy Manhattan street, or drinking beer on a brownstone rooftop. The brashness of the orchestra, the intense busyness of the arrangement, the opulence of the classical passages, the griminess of the jazz influence. The song has been so linked to the city for decades that the only more obvious selection would have been Sinatra's 'New York, New York'.Įverything about it screams New York. This was due to pop culture osmosis more than any one experience. I didn't see Manhattan until I was a teenager, and I didn't get to New York until I was 20, but I'd linked Gershwin's intense 1924 composition to New York City since childhood. I might not watch those films anymore, but it would be disingenuous to say Allen's work didn't enormously influence my perception of the city. "To him, no matter what the season was, this was still a town that existed in black and white and pulsated to the great tunes of George Gershwin," Woody Allen says in the opening to his 1979 film Manhattan. Our apologies for the many glaring omissions: this list could go on forever.
Hopefully the below list of songs is too.
And the choice is paralysing.īut the experience is always enriching. A selection of songs that remind us of the city, be it for personal or historical reasons.Ĭhoosing songs for a New York soundtrack is just like a visit to the city itself. In honour of this week's J Files, we're putting together our New York soundtrack. New York's importance in music history cannot be overstated. Listen to a special New York episode of The J Files right here. It has a richer music history than most: its contributions to the development of classical, jazz, punk, disco, hip hop, indie rock and more have shaped the sound of modern music. The music of New York is as grand and awesome as the city itself. Where you can just as easily envisage hope for a better life as you can experience a kind of crushing anxiety that the world (and this city) is gonna swallow you up. It's the kind of city where you can find anything. These songs immediately take us to New York: one of the world's greatest music cities.Įverything about New York is overwhelming.
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