“If cities were cartoon characters, Sheffield would be Homer Simpson”: How Richard Hawley captures the heart of his hometown
There is a quiet, persistent humility that defines the North of England, but even by those standards, Sheffield really isn’t a city to shout about itself.
Recently shortlisted alongside eight other contenders for the City of Culture 2029, the ‘Steel City’ has never felt the need to scream from the rooftops, but is content to let its staggering creative output do the talking. While other cities might spend millions polishing their edges for a tourist brochure, Sheffield remains gloriously, unapologetically authentic as a city of seven hills and a thousand hidden histories that carries its cultural weight with a shrug and a pint.
There is a weary resilience to the region, which has survived the hollowing out of its industrial heart, only to watch the modern ‘Northern Powerhouse’ investment drift toward Manchester and Leeds. Between Sheffield Wednesday’s chronic flirtations with financial ruin and the perennial anxiety of losing the World Snooker Championships to a more ‘global’ suitor, the city exists in a state of high-stakes survival, forever snatching a complicated, grit-toothed victory from the jaws of defeat, exhuding a specific sense of resilience that Richard Hawley captured perfectly in a 2024 interview with The Guardian.
He said, “If cities were cartoon characters, Sheffield would be Homer Simpson. It’s like, ‘D’oh!’ We get so close and ahhh, we fuck it up because we get it a bit wrong. But as long as I’ve got a hole in my arse, I’ll love this city. And I love it for its crapness as well. It’s like how I love a three-legged dog. They’ll still run for a ball.”
Not everyone could get away with such a backhanded tribute, but Hawley (born, raised, and still firmly rooted in the city’s bedrock) has earned the right, and while his peers often look toward London or LA for inspiration, Hawley draws his creative succour directly from the South Yorkshire soil.
His discography reads like a psychogeographic tour of the S-postcode: his 2001 debut ‘Late Night Final’ echoed the cries of the city’s defunct evening newspaper, 2005’s ‘Coles Corner’ immortalised a legendary meeting point for first dates, and 2012’s ‘Standing at the Sky’s Edge’ nodded to the brutalist Park Hill estate, a concrete monolith of flats that unexpectedly inspired an Olivier-winning musical.
And Hawley is far from alone in his devotion – there is a gravity to Sheffield that keeps its brightest stars in orbit, which you can understand listening to the bars of the city’s rising garage stars Coco and Denham Audio on their 2025 release ‘0114’.
“Outside and offline, zero double one four, rep for the code till the end of time”, it’s the same dialling code that the Arctic Monkeys have always famously kept emblazoned on their drumkit. Today, you might still find Matt Helders among the Scampi Fries and Guinnesses at the Irish pub Fagan’s, surrounded by teenagers piling into taxis home just as he and his compatriots once did, as recounted on ‘Red Light Indicates Doors Are Secured’ (“It’s High Green, mate / Via Hillsborough, please!”). From Jarvis Cocker documenting the thin-walled intimacy of life on Manor Top in ‘Sheffield: Sex City’ to the sprawling booze fuelled anthems of the Reverend and The Makers, the city remains its own greatest muse.
Sheffield is a city of contradictions, industrial and green, struggling and flourishing, but one thing is certain: optimism about South Yorkshire’s future is building, and if Sheffield does eventually clinch that City of Culture title, it shouldn’t be celebrated with a corporate rebrand, but a giant mural of Homer Simpson – a tribute to the three-legged dog that, despite everything, never stops running for the ball.
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