by Genevieve Williams
"London Bridge is falling down,
Falling down,
Falling down,
London Bridge is falling down,
My fair lady."
As is fitting for one of the oldest cities in Europe, London has had literally hundreds of songs written about it. London is a city of layers, laid one atop the last, rarely according to any particular plan. It hosts about as many people as New York City, and its inhabitants come from a similarly varied array of backgrounds and cultures, making for a colorful history. Much of that history is told in song.
Many nursery rhymes started out as something quite different, and "London Bridge is Falling Down" is no exception. A bridge of some sort has existed on the site for almost two millennia, and the very first London Bridge, built by the Romans in the middle of the first century AD, is probably the one referenced by the song. Built out of wood, it was at one point washed away, at another destroyed by Viking invaders in the year AD 1014. A stone bridge, built in the twelfth century, stood until 1825.
Many of the odes to London have been written by those who came there from elsewhere. The classic song "It's a Long, Long Way to Tipperary," written by Jack Judge and Harry Williams in 1912, was from the point of view of a man in London longing for his home in Ireland. The lyrics include references to Piccadilly Circus, a traffic hub and meeting-place formed in 1819 by the intersection of two streets, and nearby Leicester Square, a major center for entertainment and culture located in the heart of the city's West End district. Of course, the man in the song is quite willing to give up these delights, if he could just return home. Songs referring to London are scattered throughout traditional Irish and Scottish music, as one might expect.
London is famous for its weather, so much so that George Gershwin's "A Foggy Day in London Town" has been recorded by artists ranging from Fred Astaire to David Bowie. In the song, London's well-known fog becomes a metaphor for loneliness: "A foggy day in London Town/Had me low and had me down/I viewed the morning with alarm/The British Museum had lost its charm." Even so, over the centuries London has become home to people from all over the world and from all walks of life; blues legend Sonny Boy Williamson, who like many blues musicians found Europe more congenial than his American homeland, summed up the experience with "I'm Trying to Make London My Home." Though London, like any major metropolis, has its problems with cultural and racial clashes, Williamson, at least, found it preferable to the U.S.
London was the British birthplace of punk rock, just as New York was for the United States, and the genre boasts many songs about the city where it was born. The Clash, who even more than the Sex Pistols exemplified British punk rock, wrote "First Night Back in London." Like many songs about the city, the song shows both affinity and a strong longing to be elsewhere: "To see my lovely town/That always brings you down/Where every drifter drifts/For many miles around." Later in the song, the narrator calls up Heathrow Airport and requests a ticket to Borneo. Likewise, the band's "London's Burning" has an ironic, to say the least, perspective on life in the city: "Now I'm in the subway and I'm looking for the flat/This one leads to this block, this one leads to that/The wind howls through the empty blocks looking for a home/I run through the empty stone because I'm all alone/London's burning with boredom now...."
Of course, as soon as two distinct styles of music emerge, someone decides to cross them. The Pogues combined Irish music with punk rock; both genres, arising as they did from traditionally oppressed groups of people, had more in common than might be apparent at first glance. Like the Clash, the Pogues as a band hailed from London; like the Clash, they wrote songs about the city that betrayed mixed feelings. "Dark Streets of London" is a prime example: "Then the winter came down and I loved it so dearly/The pubs and the bookies where you'd spend all your time/And the old men that were singing/When the roses bloom again/And turn once again/To a new summertime/Then the winter comes down/And I can't stand the chill/That comes to the streets around Christmas time." Similarly, the Pogues' "London Girl" was as much about London as about the girl, setting a love song within the geography of the city.
Of course, paeans to London may be found in musical genres other than punk, Irish folk, or some hybrid of the two. British glam band T Rex, which proved influential all out of proportion to its initial following, particularly in the U.S., wrote and performed several songs about London, including "Bombs Out of London," "Funky London Childhood," and, with an apt description of youth in London at the time, "London Boys": "Mighty mean mod king/Dressed like fame/London to Brighton/And then back again." David Bowie's song of the same title came from a similar perspective, and described a similar way of life: "You think you've had a lot of fun/But you ain't got nothing, you're on the run/It's too late now, cause you're out there boy/You've got it made with the rest of the toys/Now you wish you'd never left your home/You've got what you wanted but you're on your own/With the London boys." What many of these songs had in common was their theme of a youngster lost in a strange land: London, the big city of the U.K.
Even in more recent years, London has proved a source of inspiration, even to bands that do not hail from the city. From the Misfits' grim "London Dungeon," to Godsmack's instrumental "Someone in London," to Concrete Blonde's gloomy "Walking in London," the city's influence as a setting for songs, as well as its musical influence, has made for a body of work of which we've only scratched the surface here.
Genevieve Williams is a freelance writer specializing in music, book reviews, and film. She is a former music editor for Amazon.com and a regular contributor to Blues Revue.
