Transported
Music can remind you instantly of a person – or can strongly evoke a place you know (or once knew). Referring to places, too, can bring up an image of a familiar place, an exotic locale, or a bustling city, just with a name. It's a strange power, that, and one songwriters tap into regularly.
Think of the songs you know that are about California, for example. The vibe is always about being cool, carefree, and summery. The Beach Boys set the tone here, and most songs fall in line (Katy Perry's California Gurls, for example). Some songs about specific areas of LA have a different feel, though – consider Red Hot Chili Peppers' Under The Bridge, or the album Straight Outta Compton (NWA)for contrast to the beachy California that has dominated the state's respresentations in song. California Dreamin' is a fine song for taking you there mentally, but since it's already summer, here's a sweet little surfing tune:
New York is another favourite, with songs ranging from the classic New York, New York to Billy Joel's New York State of Mind to Jay-Z and Alicia Keys' Empire State of Mind (which name-checks Sinatra, love) all flaunting NYC's reputation as a tough, bustling place that is totally worth the effort and inspires fierce love and loyalty among its citizens. I'm a fan of a couple of these, myself – nostalgia needs a soundtrack, apparen'tly. (Did you all, btw, see the TDot State of Mind knockoff? Not a bad stab at it, really.)
I have an album of Frank Sinatra songs called Come Fly With Me that basically takes a trip around the world in song, from a few states to far-flung places like Paris, Brazil, and Mandalay. It's a great collection if you like a classic sound, and embodies the high-flying jet-setting lifestyle of the brat pack perfectly.
Closer to home, Stompin' Tom Connors was well-known for writing songs about places across Canada. Songs about Tillsonberg, Manitoba, and Okanagan, to name but a few, were the sort of home-grown celebrations of obscure places that found him a devoted audience across the country. In fact, his songs have become so attached to the Canadian landscape that Canadian Geographic went ahead and mapped them! Toronto has even merited a song or two of our own, even if one is about the Don Valley Jail.
Do you have songs that make you think of a place? Or, for that matter, a favourite "place" song?
7 thoughts on “Transported”
O’ Canada makes me think of Canada. 🙂
Haha, me too! 😀
Oh, gotta love the smart-aleck in the crowd… 😉
There aren’t many songs that make me think of places. But I sometimes I listen to instrumental music and ambient and they make me think of places and seetings in my head.
Yes actually. Songs about my native country are so specific that I imagine the streets with all it’s people just the way they once were. It’s weird how music, scent, or just little things remind you of something in the past. To this day the smell of a particular soup evokes memories of kindergarten.
Yes, scent is SO tied to memory, and at such a base level, you may not even notice the smell until you are hit with the memory sometimes!
Every time I listen to drake I get these vivid memories of my grade 8 classromm because everyone listened to him so much back then. Its kind of nice to hear those pieces and then get transported back again