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From Sheffield to New York: The 10 most famous addresses in music history
The theory of contextualism argues that no art can ever be separated from its context, and by that way of thinking, no music can ever be separated from the address it was made at or the city it was made in.
We already really know that, though. The reason why people become so obsessed with the idea of different musical ‘scenes’ is that we do, in fact, see time and time again that different areas end up gaining their own unique sound or energy. Maybe it just comes down to the people, or perhaps places have their own vibration, influencing art made there simply through factors like weather, infrastructure, history and more.
Throughout musical history, we’ve seen this happen time and time again, from the rave scene of Manchester in the 1990s to the folk rock of Los Angeles in the 1960s to the gritty punk of 1970s New York. But occasionally, artists take it one step further, centring their music somewhere even more specific as they call out a direct location in a song or title a track after a particularly inspiring address.
Drawing Xs on the map, it builds up a scattering of vital musical pins where cultural history is localised at particular postcodes, including these ten key ones.
10 of the most famous addresses in songs:
