Five songs that perfectly capture Brooklyn
“When I retire, I’m going to retire to Brooklyn,” Marilyn Monroe had famously declared in a 1955 radio interview.
“That’s my favourite place in the world, so far, that I’ve seen,” she continued, “I haven’t travelled much, but I don’t think I’ll find anything to replace Brooklyn”. In another interview, she explained her love for the borough further, noting, “I just like walking around. I think the view is better from Brooklyn, you can look back over and see Manhattan. That’s the best view, but it isn’t only the view. It’s the people, and the streets…and the atmosphere, I just like it.”
Whether you hear Brooklyn and think of certain foods or films, or the infiltration of so-called hipsters who have taken over much of the borough in more recent years, there’s certainly a charm that may be hard to put into words, but it persists.
This shows in song, too; from Brooklyn-born musicians to ones who made their way into the borough and found it hard to leave, these songs capture Brooklyn across time, from childhood visions to modern-day, tongue-in-cheek dissections of what it inspires.
Five songs that capture Brooklyn’s spirit
Steely Dan – ‘Brooklyn (Owes the Charmer Under Me)’
Thanks to resident writer Aimee Mann, we know the story behind Steely Dan’s ‘Brooklyn (Owes the Charmer Under Me)’. The song was written while Donald Fagen and Walter Becker were both living in Brooklyn, inspired by the tenant who lived beneath Fagen’s apartment in Park Slope, a “loudmouthed, entitled guy”, as Mann recalled to Uncut.
The two musicians began to imagine what the tenant could possibly believe that he was entitled to, which ultimately comprised the lyrics to ‘Brooklyn’: a dish of dollars, the penthouse suite at Eden Rock, St Barths, an entire island of his own. As Mann asks, “What would it take to make this asshole happy?” The very premise, concocting an entire backstory for a relative stranger that lives a floor beneath you, just feels New York, offering a humorous twist on dealing with some of the city’s most eccentric characters. For the duo behind Steely Dan, Brooklyn became something of a muse.
Neil Diamond – ‘Brooklyn Roads’
Born and raised in Brooklyn, Neil Diamond’s ‘Brooklyn Roads’ sees the singer dive back into his childhood and upbringing in the borough, making it one of the most personal stories in his songbook. Appearing on his third album, 1968’s Velvet Gloves and Spit, Diamond recalls a night at home, his mom calling out for him to find his brother as his father arrives home for dinner, at their apartment above a butcher shop. “Life filled to the brim as I stood by my window,” he sings, “And looked out on those Brooklyn roads”.
He brings forth the sensory memories of his childhood home: food cooking in the neighbouring hallways, the feeling of his father’s slight beard touching his face as he hugs him, and the tears that stream down his face after receiving a bad report card.
“Thought of going back / But all I’d see are strangers’ faces,” he considers, of the borough he once knew, before noting, “But all I’d see are strangers’ faces / And all the scars that love erases”.
Lana Del Rey – ‘Brooklyn Baby’
For Del Rey, ‘Brooklyn Baby’ is a state of mind. Existing within the same vein as a Lou Reed song, Del Rey opens with the classic strum of a guitar and her humming, as her writing invokes nostalgic clichés. In its lyrics, her days are spent writing novels like “Beat poetry on amphetamines”, singing Reed songs while her boyfriend plays guitar and listening to a vast jazz collection.
Del Rey wrote the song with Reed in mind, intending to meet with him in New York, for the two to potentially work together. “I took the red eye, touched down at 7am…and two minutes later he died,” she recalled to The Guardian in 2014.
While leaning into the cliché, Del Rey crafts a dreamy tribute to the borough through a millennial lens of what New York, at large, could be defined by, from an outsider’s point of view. Resting between satire and sincerity, ‘Brooklyn Baby’ captures this particular, mid-2010s time in the city with a breezy melody.
Jay-Z feat The Notorious BIG – ‘Brooklyn’s Finest’
No list of Brooklyn-centric songs would be complete without the mention of two of the borough’s most well-known voices. ‘Brooklyn’s Finest’, from Jay-Z’s 1996 debut album Reasonable Doubt, hears him feature The Notorious BIG on an ode to their native borough, its lyrics filled with references to where they were raised: Jay-Z in the Marcy Projects, and Biggie in Clinton Hill, near the border of Bed-Stuy.
‘Brooklyn’s Finest’ was almost never made as there were no plans for a collaboration between the two rappers until Biggie happened to hear the Clark Kent-produced beat and insisted that he have it for himself. He introduced the two in the studio, where Jay-Z changed his initial verses on the spot, and over two months, Biggie worked on and completed his verses, and history was made.
Lou Reed – ‘Coney Island Baby’
As one of the singers most synonymous with New York, at large, Lou Reed’s ‘Coney Island Baby’ hears the Brooklyn-born singer-songwriter sing wistfully about a bygone era. As the title track of his 1975 album, ‘Coney Island Baby’ features memories of Reed’s high school years, flirting with a classic Americana vision of playing football. “‘Cause you know, someday, man, you gotta stand up straight,” he croons, “Unless you’re gonna fall, then you’re going to die”.
Reed sings of late-night loneliness spent ruminating on wrongdoings, souls being placed up for sale. He calls the city “a funny place / Somethin’ like a circus or a sewer”, but he finds a light in “the glory of love” amidst the chaos and in his then-girlfriend, Rachel Humphreys.
“I’d like to send this one out to Lou and Rachel,” he drones, with a whisper of, “I’m a Coney Island baby” behind him, “and all the kids at PS 192”, a reference to his childhood school in Brooklyn. The borough becomes intrinsic to Reed’s ballad of happiness, a full-circle reckoning with how someone’s life can grow from destruction, all through love. His love for Humphreys courses through the song, too, punctuated by the final line, “Man, I swear I’d give the whole thing up for you”.
