6 Pop Songs to Help You Better Understand Los Angeles.

In honor of LA Weekly’s cover article: Tom Petty’s Los Angeles, which explores the various L.A. locales, from Ventura Boulevard to the Sunset Strip of Petty’s life and songbook, I’ve complied a lesser-known pop song map of Los Angeles. Everything you need to know about the City of Angels is contained herein.

1) “Walking in LA” by Missing Persons

If you’re not a jogger, dog-walker or transient, and still walking in Los Angeles, God bless you. Drivers question your sanity. Panhandlers ignore you. Bicyclists edge you from the sidewalks. This song will help acclimate one to the new pedestrian caste system in this town.

2) “Los Angeles is Burning” by Bad Religion

Nothing evokes fire season like Greg Graffin singing “palm trees are candles in the murder wind.” Los Angeles’ philosopher punks use a buzzsaw guitar sound prepare one smelling sulfur on Santa Ana winds. “So many lives are on the breeze/Even the stars are ill at ease.”

3) “Celluloid Heroes” by The Kinks

“Everybody’s a dreamer, and everybody’s a star,” Ray Davies wrote this song after taking a walk down Hollywood Boulevard and returning to a lonely motel room. Many cities have a walk of fame, usually reserved for locals who were born and raised there. But Hollywood is a state of mind, as well as a neighborhood, and being a “star” is enough to grant you permanent residency. “Celluloid heroes never die”

4) “Los Angelenos” By Billy Joel

For transplants, this song addresses an L.A. truism, that nearly everyone you meet here is from somewhere else. Billy Joel trains his cynical lyrics on “Midwestern Ladies, high-heeled and faded/ Drivin’ sleek new Sports cars/ with their New York Cowboys.” Translated: The best-looking girl from your high school is catching a ride in the Masarati of a Westchester-bred creative exec.

5) “Show Biz Kids” by Steely Dan

Steely Dan founders Walter Becker and Donald Fagin became a Los Angeles band by default, but they knew the town well enough to compose this biting ditty about privileged children growing up in the entertainment capital of the world. “Show biz kids making movies of themselves/You know they don’t give a fuck about anybody else.” Hollywood nepotism is no less widespread than any other industry, just a bit more on display. “They got the booze they need/All that money can buy.”

6) “I Love L.A.” by Randy Newman

With just a trace of irony, hometown hero Randy Newman manages to work Century, Victory and Santa Monica boulevards into this song, which has become a staple of L.A. sporting events. The fact that the tune can be taken both seriously and not, reveals the dichotomy of embracing a city unlike any other. Each of those roadways stretches from the poorest to the richest areas, miles and miles apart but still part of the same weird tapestry of Los Angeles.

Photo by jrossol via Flickr