A number of songs mention New Haven.
A number of those aren’t music to my ears.
Here are five that are.
“Sunday on the West Side” (1998)
by Push Kings | Spotify | Youtube
Frilly flute, trashy drums, crystal keys, buzzy guitar, impertinent bass and a pining warble combine for a broken-hearted bus ride that somehow feels upbeat. “So I’ll be crying all the way through New Haven / I’ll be crying all the way back home / And the road that stretches out behind me / Is the only place I wanna go.”
“Gunpowder” (1997)
by Wyclef Jean featuring Lauryn Hill | Spotify | Youtube
This acoustic guitar reggae ballad featuring Hill’s delicious backup stylings seeks an end to violence, though it doesn’t know how to get there. The song starts in Haiti, where the narrator’s brother has been shot and killed, and ends by roving around the world, with a conspicuous focus on the American northeast: Brooklyn, New Jersey and “even” New Haven.
“Acela” (2011)
by Fountains of Wayne | Spotify | Youtube
In 2003, one-hit wonder Fountains of Wayne released their one wondrous hit, a racy song with a racier music video about a pubescent boy’s fantasies involving a female friend’s mother. Eight years later, Stacy’s mom could be the very person on the still-lovelorn (but far less hormonal) singer’s mind as he takes a train through Connecticut, finding a bit of solace in a lonely ride that’s “entertaining by New Haven,” at least.
“Antoinette Birby” (c. 1912)
by Cole Porter | Youtube
The internet apparently offers just one way to experience this song about a pretty maiden who’s “off for New Haven”: a 2007-posted concert clip of Yale a cappella group Redhot & Blue. Prompted by the group’s comedic choreography, the concert crowd cheers and laughs, often drowning out the lyrics. But it sounds (and looks) like our protagonist has an itch only the big city can scratch, compelling her to leave her cow-milking existence in pastoral Derby for the glitz and glam of waitressing at the Taft Hotel. Initially smitten by what she calls a “town with no lid,” the woman has some kind of romantic fling that leaves her fleeing back to Derby.
“Roses in the Backseat” (2019)
by Brett Cameron Steinberg | Spotify | Youtube
This list ends like it started and middled: with heartbreak in a moving vehicle. “Met you at a friend’s show in New Haven,” says the narrator behind the wheel, in a slickly produced yet creatively structured song that remembers how he found and lost love.
Written by Dan Mims. Image features Wyclef Jean during the music video for “Gunpowder.”
