A musical celebration of the 50 states. One song each week over the course of the year.
Oh, California. My adopted home, the muse of so many musicians over the years. How can I pick just one song for you?
This is almost certainly the most difficult state. You might make an argument for New York, but there the songs are really mostly all about one thing: the city itself. With California, the reach is expansive. California makes us dream.
Is your muse the beautiful city of fog by the Bay? Then you’ll want to make sure to wear flowers in your hair. Or keep an ear out for Otis Redding whistling down on the dock. You might catch the San Francisco Bay Blues, or you might lose your head there waiting for the fog to roll out.
Or go south, to the beaches of Malibu and Santa Monica, where the surf is high and palm trees bend in the wind. It’s a particularly powerful vision on such a winter’s day. But watch out for the vampires walkin’ through the valley. The celluloid heroes of Hollywood that drift around you.
And then there are the women. Those California Girls. Fine, fresh, fierce…you wish they all could be like that. Or maybe you hate California girls. Maybe you’re looking for a lucky little lady in the City of Light. Or just another lost angel?
Or maybe for you California is the land of Bad Religion, of The Descendents, of Social Distortion. It’s California Uber Alles.
Or it’s the world of Compton and Watts, of South Central, and you hear the refrain of gunshots and the stomp of police boots.
I could go on forever. But ultimately I still need to pick one song. And for me it came down to three possibilities. One is pure schlock, but such wonderful schlock. The second steps beyond the specificities to tap into something far more eternal. And the third…well, ultimately it had to be the third.
So the first one is Phantom Planet’s “California.” You may remember it as the theme song to The OC, and it (of course) is nowhere near the best song about California. But in some ways it’s absolutely the most appropriate.
The second is “California Stars” by Wilco and Billy Bragg, lyrics written by Woody Guthrie – most likely composed at some point in the midst of the Great Depression. It manages to feel absolutely at home in either era. It’s a timeless classic.
But, in the end, there was no other choice but this one: