11 classic New York songs that capture the spirit of the city

Type “New York” into a Spotify search, and you’ll get a list of hundreds and hundreds of titles (and those are just the ones with the city name in their title). Of course, the greatest city on Earth has inspired countless songs. After all, it’s the birthplace of hip-hop, punk rock, and disco, and was the launching pad of Billy Joel, Lady Gaga, and Jay-Z, to name just a few. But some tunes have made a more indelible mark on city life than others, which is why we’ve put together this list of 11 classic New York songs that capture the spirit of the city.

1. “New York, New York” by Frank Sinatra (1979)

Technically known as the “(Theme From) New York, New York,” this iconic song was originally performed by Liza Minnelli in the final scene of Martin Scorsese’s 1977 film “New York, New York.”

However, when Frank Sinatra covered the song two years later at the urging of his wife, it became a true New York classic and the closing number to Sinatra’s performances.

In 1980, Yankees owner George Steinbrenner began playing New York, New York after home field wins in the Bronx. In more recent years, the song played after every home game, but this year, the Yankees went back to the original win-only schedule.

But perhaps the best example of how synonymous this song is with NYC is that during the pandemic, after the nightly clapping tribute to essential workers, New Yorkers sang these lyrics.

2. “New York State of Mind” by Billy Joel (1976)

If “New York State of Mind” really makes you feel the NYC love, that’s because a 27-year-old Billy Joel wrote the song when he left Los Angeles and headed back to New York.

“‘New York State of Mind,’” I wrote actually while I was on a Greyhound bus on my way back from a gig somewhere,” Joel told SiriusXM in 2016, per the celebrity.land. “And I was really homesick for New York, and the words started coming to me on the bus, and the melody.”

At the time, New York City was dealing with high rates of crime and drugs, and Joel said, “It really needed a boost, and I wanted to write an anthem for it.”

3. “N.Y. State of Mind” by Nas (1994)

As Rolling Stone wrote in their list of the 50 greatest rap songs of all time, “‘N.Y. State of Mind’ is no anthem or ode to the city; it’s a detailed narrative about a Gotham gunfight, delivered in a nearly 60-bar run that Nas later broke up for the song.”

Unlike Billy Joel’s song of nearly the same name, Nas’ single exposes how, for some, the “New York state of mind” is much different than all the glitz and glam. Though he was born in Brooklyn, Nas grew up in the Queensbridge Houses, a public housing development in Long Island City.

4. “Empire State of Mind” by Jay-Z featuring Alicia Keys (2009)

If you went to any New York City bar in 2009 or 2010, this song would be playing. It’s the brainchild of New York songwriters Angela Hunte and Janet “Jnay” Sewell Ulepic, who wrote it when they were feeling homesick while at music producer Al Shux’s London studio, as GQ explains.

When the song made its way to Jay-Z, he instantly fell in love with it, as he wrote in his 2010 biography “Decoded.”

“When I first heard the track… I was sure it would be a hit. It was gorgeous. My instinct was to dirty it up, to tell stories of the city’s gritty side, to use stories about hustling and getting hustled to add tension to the soaring beauty of the chorus.” Enter Alicia Keys, and this became an insta-anthem.

5. “The Only Living Boy in New York” by Simon & Garfunkel (1970)

Paul Simon wrote “The Only Living Boy in New York” during a time when Art Garfunkel was filming a movie in Mexico. The pair originally met when they were kids growing up in Queens, but years later, Simon acknowledged that Garfunkel was pursuing a second career as an actor while he was left feeling lonely in New York. 

This may be a very specific situation, but anyone who’s ever come of age in the city knows the deep loneliness that can accompany it.

6. “No Sleep Till Brooklyn” by the Beastie Boys (1986)

Long before Williamsburg became a sort of Disney World and young families started ditching Manhattan for Park Slope, the Beastie Boys put Brooklyn on the cool map when they rapped “No Sleep Till Brooklyn” on their debut studio album. 

However, they’d put out seven previous albums, and No Sleep was about returning home after touring. As MTV News explained, the song was also noteworthy for its “merging of hip-hop and rock that the guys pulled off with their trademark tongue-in-cheek swagger.”

7. “C.R.E.A.M.” by Wu-Tang Clan (1993)

Staten Island doesn’t get a lot of love, but these rappers from the borough made sure it got its due. As Pitchfork shares, “C.R.E.A.M.” (Cash Rules Everything Around Me) is, at its core, about “the hopelessness of a capitalist system that’s built to trap so many into lives of crime and poverty.”

As such, the music video starts in the projects of Staten Island and finishes with a lavish depiction of city life.

8. “Welcome to New York” by Taylor Swift (2014)

In so many songs about NYC, the idea of “making it” in the big city is front and center, and Taylor Swift’s “Welcome to New York” is no exception.

She wrote the song after buying a Tribeca penthouse in 2014. In an interview with Good Morning America that same year, Swift explained that she made “Welcome to New York” the first track on her album 1989 because it expressed the possibility she felt after relocating. 

“The inspiration that I found in that city is kind of hard to describe and hard to compare to any other force of inspiration I’ve ever experienced in my life,” she said, as per E! News.

“I approached moving there with such wide-eyed optimism and sort of saw it as a place of endless potential and possibilities. You can kind of hear that reflected in this music and this first song especially.” 

Whether or not it was Swift’s intention, the song also became connected to LGBTQ+ rights, as she sang, “And you can want who you want. Boys and boys and girls and girls.”

(Side note: Swift’s 2019 song “Cornelia Street” references the carriage house she rented on the street.)

9. “New York, I Love You, but You’re Bringing Me Down” by LCD Soundsystem (2007)

As anyone who’s ever lived in New York City for an extended period of time knows, it can be both the greatest city in the world and also the most hopeless. This is what LCD Soundsystem frontman James Murphy expressed in “New York, I Love You, but You’re Bringing Me Down.”

He mainly laments about gentrification and how he “views the city as becoming too expensive and ‘clean’ for his liking, and that because the city became a safe, wealth-driven metropolis, it has suffered to produce raw art and the wild times he imagined he would experience,” as NYS Music breaks down.

10. “Uptown Girl” by Billy Joel (1983)

Seven years after “New York State of Mind” was released, Billy Joel wrote Uptown Girl about a downtown, working-class guy pursuing an uptown model. 

As American Songwriter notes, Joel was inspired after a trip to St. Barts, where he was hanging out with supermodels Whitney Houston, Christie Brinkley, and his then-girlfriend Elle Macpherson. The music video features his later wife Brinkley driving a Rolls-Royce. 

Though more about relationship dynamics, there’s no denying Uptown Girl has become synonymous with the uptown-downtown divide.

11. “Summer in the City” by The Lovin’ Spoonful (1966)

Like so many others, The Lovin’ Spoonful got their start at the music clubs in Greenwich Village, with “Summer in the City” detailing the heat of a summer day in the city, juxtaposed with the cool nights and all the promise they offer.

But Village Preservation details an interesting tidbit about this chart-topper: The lyrics were actually written by a 15-year-old Mark Sebastian, the younger brother of lead singer John Sebastian. 

“The Sebastian Brothers grew up in a musical household in Greenwich Village; their father was a noted classical harmonica player and their mother a writer of radio programs,” Village Preservation wrote. “Regular visitors to the family’s home overlooking Washington Square Park included Burl Ives and Woody Guthrie.”