By Don Jacobson
How is Chicago portrayed in rock and popular music lyrics?
From the looks of things, songwriters have pigeonholed Chicago basically as the home of the blues–not too surprising, since this is what most of the country does, too. But is that all that is in the minds of songwriters? Are there any other aspects of the city that have inspired songcraft over the years?
Yep. Songwriters have identified the city with elevators, poverty, transportation, political protest, and drugs. Which, I think, is also pretty accurate. This is just a brief sample of what a search of lyrical mentions of Chicago has yielded–minus, of course, the obvious ones like “Sweet Home Chicago,” “Jesus Just Left Chicago,” or any song by the band Chicago, Jim Croce, Liz Phair or Frank Sinatra.
Posted on February 26, 2006