This week Tony and I took to the Streets! Streets, whether real or fictional, have inspired songs throughout the history of Popular music; they serve as narrative settings, metaphorical destinations, or as cultural symbols. On the show this week we looked at a selection of Street Songs across the decades, from New York to L.A., and from Fascination to (Street) Fighting…
42nd Street & 110th Street
42nd Street is a 1980 stage musical with a book by Michael Stewart and Mark Bramble, lyrics by Al Dubin and Johnny Mercer, and music by Harry Warren. Unusually, the stage musical was in fact based on the 1932 novel by Bradford Ropes and the subsequent 1933 Hollywood film adaptation 42nd Street. The story follows a struggling Broadway production that turns a naïve chorus girl into an overnight star when the original leading lady is injured just before opening night. The film was made in the “pre-Code” era, before strict enforcement of Hollywood censorship rules in mid-1934 known as the Hays Code. The film therefore includes relatively frank references to sexuality, infidelity, and adult relationships that would soon be toned down under the Code. The film one of most successful motion pictures released in 1933, and earned almost $1.5 million at the box office. It was also nominated for Best Picture at the 6th Academy Awards. 42nd Street is the title song from the film and features in the finale, where its sung by Ruby Keeler, Dick Powell, and ensemble.
Across 110th Street by Bobby Womack was released as the lead single to the soundtrack for the 1972 blaxploitation film of the same name. Blaxploitation films were a subgenre of action movie derived from the larger ‘exploitation’ film umbrella. They first emerged in the 1960s and flourished throughout early to mid 1970s. The film were consequent to the combined cultural momentum of black civil rights movement and the black power movements; these political and sociological circumstances facilitated black artists reclaiming the power of representation of black identity in arts. After the misrepresentation of black people in the race films of the 1940s, ’50s, and ’60s, the Blaxploitation genre presented black characters and black communities as the protagonists and the places of stories. 110th Street is a real street in Manhattan, and marks the edge of Harlem and East Harlem. In the 1960s, on the East Side, it ran close to major public-housing developments. The song’s title is therefore geographical and symbolic at once: “across 110th Street” means heading north into Harlem, crossing a real social and economic boundary.
Fascination Street & Sullivan Street
The Cure released Fascination Street on their eighth studio album Disintegration (1989). The song was issued as single only in North America, as the band’s American record company refused to release band’s original choice Lullaby, which was released as the first single in UK. Fascination Street became the band’s first numer one single on US Billboard’s then-newly created Modern Rock Tracks chart, and stayed on top for seven weeks. The song’s success is notable given how bleak the lyrical content is; Robert Smith described it as “a ‘generic’ song about the (often cynical) delights of exploring a new city nightlife; based loosely on one particular ‘band adventure’ in New Orleans 1985 – Bourbon Street, the cliche perhaps”…
Sullivan Street shares its name with a street in Lower Manhattan, which was named for Revolutionary War Major General John Sullivan in 1799 – before then, it was known as Locust Street. Counting Crows‘ 1993 song, however, is not related to this New York location. Sullivan Street was released as the eighth track from the band’s debut album August and Everything After, and was written by singer Adam Duritz and guitarist David Bryson. The lyrics were written by Duritz about the breakup of a relationship: “My last girlfriend […] her mother was living with her, and her mother’s very Catholic. We couldn’t spend the night together, so I was […] making these drives in the middle of the night […] when I was writing this song, the lyrics came out: “Pretty soon I won’t come around”[…] It’s about the inevitability of leaving”.
Scott Street
Scott Street was released on September 22, 2017, as the fifth track from Phoebe Bridger‘s debut studio album Stranger in the Alps (2017). The song was co-written with Bridger‘s ex-boyfriend and then-band drummer Marshall Vore, and is named after Scott Avenue, a road in Echo Park near the Bedrock L.A. practice facility where Bridgers and Vore used to store music equipment. Critics at The Fader have noted the similarities between Scott Street and St. Ides Heaven by Elliott Smith (1995), in particular the use of the lyric “open container”, and songwriting generally around a lonesome walk down a street.
New Order v John Denver
Our soundslike this week looked at a similarity between John Denver‘s 1966 song Leaving On A Jet Plane, and New Order‘s 1989 song Run 2. The guitar solos and some of the vocal lines in the latter were thought to sound very similar to the verse melody in Denver’s song, whose publisher Cherry Hill Music took legal action, and the dispute was settled out of court. Denver subsequently received a co-writer credit on the song. Similar melody lines, however, are found in For the First Time in Forever from Disney’s Frozen (2013), and On My Own from Les Miserables (1980)
Streets Quiz
For our quiz this week, you heard famous Street songs (backwards) – guess the artist and song!
As always, find the show and blog at joebennett.net/5live, with occasional Instagram extras at @joebennettmusicology. With a new show comes a new Spotify mega-playlist, which contains all songs featured on the show:
And you can still listen to our old mega-playlist here.
- Words: Joe Bennett, John Pierce O’Reilly
- Audio production: Joe Bennett, Rafi Waters
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