Echoing down the halls in our mostly-cushy dorms, blaring from storefronts - a sanitized New York song for a sanitized downtown Manhattan.īecause I was truly embracing my life as a New York transplant in those days, I spent a good chunk of that first year or two on busses in and out of the city, back home to PA or to smaller college towns to visit people. “Empire State Of Mind” became a big hit all across America, but where I was living you heard it everywhere in those days. Imagine the on-the-nose perfection: A new wave of 18-year-olds, bright-eyed and nervous and already convinced they’d made it just by arriving here, and a massive, catchy pop-rap song seemingly custom designed for them in that moment. It was a commercial success, and an artistic failure - yet for some reason critics voted it the best single of 2009 in the Village Voice’s Pazz + Jop poll. On September 8th, 2009 - 10 years ago yesterday - Jay-Z released The Blueprint 3, the album that featured “Empire State Of Mind.” For better or for worse, upon arrival I was gifted one of the New York anthems specific to my generation. I could relate to all of the songs told from the perspective of being just outside of it, then finally in it, taking it for yourself. On August 30th, 2009, I moved to New York after growing up in northeastern Pennsylvania I was of that camp almost within reach of the city but not there. The 10th anniversary of “Empire State Of Mind” coincides with another 10 year anniversary, a personal one.
JAY Z EMPIRE STATE OF MIND ORIGINAL MOVIE
The kind of song that was supposed to sum up all the promise that skyline seemed to hold when viewed from far away, whether on a movie screen halfway across the world or in the moment when you first crest the right hill on the right New Jersey highway and the real destination comes into focus. The kind of song that was as grand and shimmering as the skyline. In “Empire State Of Mind,” Jay-Z attempted something towards the latter end of the tradition. Then you have the giant, sweeping stories, the ones that reach for the universal lure of this place - a song like Frank Sinatra’s “Theme From New York, New York,” the promise of reinvention in the city looming in the horizon over just about everywhere else, a relatable tale for the millions upon millions of people who grew up one place and decided that life awaited them in another place.Īcross the spectrum, these were the songs that enticed each new generation to try and stake their claim to New York. You have slices of life that, when magnified across the past, start to feel mythological - “ Positively 4th St.” or any number of ’60s Bob Dylan cuts conjuring a bygone era of Greenwich Village and of American identity.
Many New York songs came from natives, but perhaps even more came from outsiders - whether from across the river (Bruce Springsteen’s “ New York City Serenade“) or from across the ocean (the Pogues’ “ Fairytale Of New York” or Sting’s “ Englishman In New York“). Vincent’s “ New York.” You have pissed-off documents of the times, like the Strokes’ “ New York City Cops,” and yearning daydreams that transcend time, like Simon & Garfunkel’s “ The Only Living Boy In New York.” You have embraced theme songs like Beastie Boys’ “ No Sleep Till Brooklyn,” and you have glorified MTA sloganeering like Taylor Swift’s “ Welcome To New York.” 2” to Lou Reed’s “ Walk On The Wild Side” or Bobby Womack’s “ Across 110th Street” and Bill Withers’ “ Harlem.” You have melancholic tributes, reflecting on loss and defeat and rejuvenation within an unyielding yet transformative city, all the way from Billie Holiday’s rendition of “ Autumn In New York” to St. You have songs born from and capturing particular eras and milieus, Leonard Cohen’s “ Chelsea Hotel No.
The lineage of New York City songs is, of course, as varied and complex and rich as the town that inspired it. And 10 years ago, Jay-Z and Alicia Keys released another bid for the canon in the form of “Empire State Of Mind.”
JAY Z EMPIRE STATE OF MIND ORIGINAL TV
You can walk its streets and try to exhume the remains of any number of scenes, any number of iconic artists, because we’ve grown up consuming a countless amount of TV shows, films, and songs either set here or extolling this city’s magnificence. History is inscribed on every corner and in every facade - crucial moments throughout American history, and crucial moments throughout musical history. Regardless of your own personal feelings on the place, or however a person might perceive its rises and falls from one decade to the next, New York has been a fixation and a global destination for longer than all of us have been alive. Start spreading the news: New York is the greatest city on the planet.