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Culture

Songs about cities

Antje Binder db
August 3, 2018

Life in a big city offers a lot of material for song lyrics. A look at millions of songs has produced a ranking of the cities sung about the most.

https://p.dw.com/p/32ZS5
England Skyline London
Image: picture-alliance/Prisma/C. Bowman

It's easy to guess the winner in the worldwide ranking of cities that inspired the most songs: New York, with a whopping 30,867 songs. That's according to a study by a travel agency and a lyrics online platform that scanned 14 million international song texts for city names.

Everyone has heard at least one song about New York, be it Frank Sinatra's time-honored unofficial anthem "New York, New York" or Jay Z and Alicia Keys' "Empire State of Mind" - the new unofficial city anthem. Other favorites include Taylor Swift's "Welcome to New York" and Ed Sheeran with "New York." The study also found that at least a dozen New-York-themed songs join the long list every year.

What follows New York in the ranking?

Two European cities, although a far cry from the top-ranked Big Apple. The High Five ranking of European cities featured most often in songs reveals who came in second and third.