The third guest blog from Brendan Conway. This one is going to lead to a lot of growth in the play list.
It can sometimes be useful to bring music into our geography teaching, especially when the artists who created and/or performed the music allude to a geographical term, concept, idea or insight, often by accident. We might call such artists ‘anonymous geographers’ because their expressions of geography are usually subconscious.
Let’s consider some examples.
Now That's What I Call Human Geography!
The world’s population has rapidly urbanised over the last hundred years, officially becoming over fifty per cent urban in 2007. Consequently, many songs about urban life have emerged, especially from the mid-1960s onwards.
Nowhere To Run (1965) by Martha Reeves & The Vandellas helps us to tell some interesting geographical stories, especially in conjunction with the accompanying early pop video made on a Ford Mustang assembly line in Detroit. There are links with economic sectors, rural-urban migration pull factors, comparisons with the rise and fall of the Rust Belt and changing health and safety practice in the workplace.
Penny Lane / Strawberry Fields Forever (1966) by The Beatles and Waterloo Sunset (1967) by The Kinks pioneered psychogeographical perspectives of city life.
Later, urban dislocation and anomie were captured in songs such as Town Called Malice (1982) by The Jam, based on Paul Weller’s upbringing in Woking, Surrey. West End Girls (1984) by Pet Shop Boys deals with inner-city class conflict in London, using a bleak narrative and intentionally obscure lyrical style influenced by TS Eliot's poem The Waste Land (1922). Station Approach (2005) by Elbow develops an affectionate sense of place, inspired by lead singer Guy Garvey’s rail journeys via Manchester Piccadilly: ‘coming home I feel like I designed these buildings I walk by’.
Conversely, 'Gold Rush' (2018) by US indie pop band Death Cab for Cutie is a powerful lament about rapid urban change. It’s about recent developments in Seattle, Washington which rendered some areas almost unrecognisable:
‘I feel like stranger here;
Searching for something that's disappeared;
Digging for gold in my neighbourhood;
For what they say is the greater good;
But all I see is a long goodbye;
A requiem for a skyline…
I’ve placed faith in geography,
to hold you in my memory.’
An excellent tongue-in-cheek celebration of the built environment is 'The World’s Biggest Paving Slab' (2023) by English Teacher, who won the Mercury Music Prize in 2024.
The song invites closer observation of the minutiae of the urban environment, celebrating an extremely large paving stone outside Colne Town Hall, Lancashire with dimensions of 3x2.7m (10x9ft). The slab was installed in the late 19th century having been extracted from Cloughfold Quarry, near Rawtenstall in Rossendale, Lancashire:
‘I am the world’s biggest paving slab;
But I sit here quietly;
No one ever looks down at the ground;
Yeah, no one ever notices me’.
Several rural issues are included in Hard Times of Old England Retold (2007) by The Imagined Village such as the decline of rural services, habitat loss, the impact of holiday homes on house prices and supermarkets on prices of farm produce.
Kraftwerk are masters of synth-pop soundscapes about transportation including Autobahn (1974) about motorway driving, Trans-Europe Express (1977) about long distance rail travel and Tour de France (1983) which is a celebration of cycling. Their music was foundational to the development of hip-hop such as Planet Rock (1982) by Afrika Bambaataa.
Now That's What I Call Physical Geography!
There are many great songs referring to the physical landscape.
Among the best topographical songs are Ain't No Mountain High Enough (1966) by by Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell or Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God) (1985) by Kate Bush.
The British group Public Service Broadcasting have created many excellent geographically oriented tracks, including Everest (2013) which sampled narration from the documentary about the first successful ascent of Mount Sagarmāthā (Everest) called The Conquest of Everest (1953).
The track was used to promote an Everest 1953 Sagarmatha Chomolungma (3D Scene made using ArcGIS Online)
Rivers are a popular geographical topic for many songwriters.
Black Water (1974) by The Doobie Brothers was inspired by the Mississippi; American Pie (1971) by Don McLean is a perennial favourite, not least for its reference to a hard engineering in flood management: ‘Drove my Chevy to the levee but the levee was dry’ and River (1971) by Joni Mitchell has recently become a popular Christmas song.
Weather phenomena often appear in songs.
Arguably the most popular are optimistic tracks with singalongability such as 'I Can See Clearly Now' (1972) by Johnny Nash, Here Comes The Sun (1969) by The Beatles, superbly covered by Nina Simone in 1971 and 'Weather With You' (1992) by Crowded House. Summer In The City (1966) by The Lovin' Spoonful is about the urban heat island effect.
One of the most overtly meteorological songs is the tribute to the BBC Shipping Forecast: 'This Is A Low' (1994) by Blur.
There are surprisingly few songs about climate change, but one of the best is Oh Larsen B (2005) by (British) Sea Power, about the ongoing collapse of the Larsen Ice Shelf in Antarctica:
‘You had twelve thousand years and now it's all over;
Five hundred billion tonnes of the purest pack ice and snow…
Oh Larsen B, desalinate the barren sea.’
Let’s hope for more songs about climate change and who knows, one day there might be a band called Geography Teacher?!
The tracks mentioned are on the playlist that Brendan has created called Now That's What I Call Geography! (Vol 1).
It is embedded below:
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