Thousands of songs have been written about LA. Here are 25 sure-fire classics
Despite the volume and variety of lyrical references, a Google search of "songs about LA" invariably turns up the same dozen songs, "I Love L.A.," "Straight Outta Compton," "Free Fallin'" and "All I Wanna Do" among them.
Many are essential characterizations, but these songs' ubiquity wrongly suggests they're so imaginatively rendered that they eclipse the thousands of other songs set in Southern California. At this point, these classics gum up efforts to build a new list of crucial music about contemporary Los Angeles, which is what the Times is attempting to do with a project called "50 Songs for a New LA"
The project features essays, interviews, portraits and quick primers on the past 25 years' worth of crucial songwriting about the city.
As a way to further a new conversation about representing Los Angeles in song without having to repeat others' work, The Times has constructed a kind of virtual Hall of Fame of Los Angeles songs. Hardly all-encompassing, the list below corrals the aforementioned classics into a separate category. Think of it as "The 25 Songs You Already Know Are About Los Angeles."
Limited to work starting in 1969 and running through the early '00s - which is the era that opens the "50 Songs for a New LA" list - these 25 songs helped define the sound of the city at the end of one century and the beginning of the next. When possible, we've attempted to include interviews with artists recalling the inspiration behind the songs, as well as contemporaneous reports culled from The Times' archives.
_Flying Burrito Bros., "Sin City" (1969)
Key lyric: "The scientists say/ It will all wash away/ But we don't believe any more/ 'Cause we've got our recruits/ And our green mohair suits/ So please show your ID at the door/ This old earthquake's gonna leave me in the poor house/ It seems like this whole town's insane/ On the 31st floor a gold-plated door/ Won't keep out the Lord's burning rain."
Flying Burrito Bros. co-founder and former Byrds member Chris Hillman told The Times in 2007 that he and his then-roommate Gram Parsons wrote the song in a half-hour one morning over coffee. They were living in a rented house near Ventura Boulevard, and the opening lines came to Hillman as he was waking up.
The songwriter called it a warning to LA newcomers, citing "people like Gene Clark from the Byrds, who came here from Kansas with all that talent and all bright-eyed and talented and idealistic, and the whole thing just swallowed him up." Hillman said
