A List Of Things Thrown Five Minutes Ago

RESTATEMENT (SECOND) STATES: As Spacewoman mentioned in the comments a few threads back, on orders from Spaceboy v1.0, I actually did have to go back and update the states playlist to include another Carolina, a Washington, and a Montana. I was also ordered to include the Canadian provinces and the states and territories of Australia and the UK, although I have a week-long reprieve on the latter two. I won’t list all of the songs here, though I will put in plugs for “Carolina” (Andrew Kenny & Ben Gibbard, the latter of Postal Service fame), “Washington” (a messy New-Orleans-style romp by the Nicholas Tremulis Orchestra, about the district, not the state), “Saskatchewan” (a pretty funny song by Lost and Found, which apparently is a Christian rock band), and “”Kidnapped in the Yukon” (90s-Sub Pop-ish indie pop by Eagle and Talon). I’d also recommend “New Brunswick, Gaspesie, Abitibi” if you’re in the market for what seems to be a rollicking Quebecois drinking song, but it could be an ode to white power for all the French I know.

The (ahem) research I did for this project gave me a good non-scientific sample of music about states, so please indulge me while I report my conclusions:

• The most musically-significant state by far is California. It is usually one of three things: a land of mythic promise; the repository for the scummiest people in the world; or a place where people go to seek mythic promise and end up living among the scummiest people in the world.
• The other most musically-significant states are Texas (where braggarts breed braggarts – songs about Texas are nearly unanimous in their pro-Texas sentiment), an undefined Carolina (a place where, apparently, everybody leaves but to which everybody wants to return; so real estate is probably pretty cheap but you had better beat the rush); and New York (but not the part of it that is not the city).
• The least musically-significant state is Washington. Nobody, and I mean nobody, sings about Washington. I used M. Ward’s “Four Hours in Washington” because it’s a good song and not specific, but I don’t think it’s about the state. You can find 70s trifles about Seattle, 80s punk about Olympia, and 90s grunge about Sequim, but damned if you can find a good song about Washington. There are more songs about Prince Edward Island than about Washington, and that’s just embarrassing. Similarly, all songs about Alberta are actually about a woman that Leadbelly knew. And don’t get me started on Nunavut. iTunes has three songs with Nunavut in the title, and not one of them has words. This is because actual songwriters who choose to write songs about Nunavut know exactly as much about Nunavut as you do.
• There are a million folk songs about states. Apparently man invented love at some time in the 1930s. Before that, people were only allowed to sing about three things: (1) their current or former locations, and the means or route for getting from one to the other; (2) drinking; and (3) the Erie Canal. And yet all venerable folk songs about states sound exactly alike, especially if they’re sung by married couples.