Listen to article \u2022\u00a00:00 min<\/p>\n
Only 76 songs to encapsulate the history of the boundlessly rich and impossibly varied sound of Philadelphia?<\/p>\n
That wasn\u2019t nearly enough. <\/p>\n
Earlier this year, in time for the approaching Philly 250 celebration of the nation\u2019s Semiquincentennial<\/a>, and with the help of my classical music colleague Peter Dobrin, I compiled a list of 76 Songs<\/a> made in the city \u2014 or about the city, or by people from the city or region \u2014 that are essentially Philadelphian.<\/p>\n I\u2019m not complaining. It was fun and sent me on journeys of discovery to learn stuff I didn\u2019t know about the bottomless depth of Philly soul, the city\u2019s enthralling jazz history or the range of indie rock that\u2019s become a calling card this century. <\/p>\n But list-making is a difficult, fraught process, and I made lots of choices that I immediately had second thoughts about. Like cutting Grover Washington Jr. to make way for the Trammps, or leaving Sister Sledge or Jazmine Sullivan or personal favorites like Go To Blazes off the list. Or including the Soul Survivors\u2019 \u201cExpressway To Your Heart\u201d but leaving \u201cI-76\u201d by G. Love & Special Sauce parked on the side of the road. <\/p>\n Were those stupid decisions? Possibly. So this list that follows \u2014 25 more essential songs of Philadelphia \u2014 is a chance to make room for those shoulda-coulda selections and bring the total number up to a more reasonable 101. Which, quite frankly, will still be an inadequate number for any true Philly music lover. <\/p>\n Some ground rules: Artists who were included in the original 76 were ineligible this time. So while the initial list featured the O\u2019Jays\u2019 \u201cBack Stabbers,\u201d I ruled out another undeniably iconic O\u2019Jays song, \u201cFor the Love of Money,\u201d to make way for other artists. <\/p>\n And I didn\u2019t consider holiday songs, which belong in a separate category. So apologies to the Philly Specials\u2019 \u201cFairytale of Philadelphia\u201d and Alan Mann\u2019s \u201cChristmas on the Block.\u201d <\/p>\n Also, these songs are numbered in reverse, but I thought of them more as a playlist than a worst-to-first ranking. They\u2019re all worthy additions to the original 76. <\/p>\n 25. The Fugees, \u201cReady or Not\u201d<\/p>\n The Fugees are not a Philly band \u2014 they\u2019re from Haiti and North Jersey. But the hip-hop trio of Lauryn Hill, Wyclef Jean, and Pras Michel recorded for Ruffhouse Records, the Conshohocken<\/a> label founded by Chris Schwartz and Joe \u201cThe Butcher\u201d Nicolo, which also released Hill\u2019s 1998 album The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, as well as albums by Cypress Hill, Kris Kross, and Ben Arnold. \u201cReady or Not,\u201d from the Fugees\u2019 1996 album The Score, represents Ruffhouse because its chorus is based on a Philly soul classic, the Delfonics\u2019 \u201cReady or Not Here I Come (Can\u2019t Hide From Love),\u201d written by William Hart and Thom Bell.<\/p>\n 24. Mark Knopfler, \u201cSailing To Philadelphia\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cSailing to Philadelphia\u201d is a song about surveyors. Dire Straits leader Mark Knopfler was making his way through Thomas Pynchon\u2019s 1997 novel Mason & Dixon, about Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon, the Englishmen who drew the boundary line that became recognized as the U.S.\u2019s free states and slave states when he wrote what he once called a \u201ctwo-minute take on a two-ton book.\u201d (The lovely narrative ballad, which is a duet with James Taylor and the title cut of Knopfler\u2019s 2000 album, is actually five and a half minutes long.)<\/p>\n 23. Mary Lattimore, \u201cWawa By The Ocean.\u201d <\/p>\n Philly\u2019s favorite convenience store and the Jersey Shore<\/a>, all in one song title? Indie rock harpist Mary Lattimore\u2019s sparkling, transporting instrumental was inspired by a Wawa<\/a> steps away from the beach on Long Beach Island.<\/p>\n 22. The Wonder Years, \u201cCame Out Swinging\u201d<\/p>\n The lead track from the Lansdale-born band The Wonder Years\u2019 2011 album Suburbia I\u2019ve Given You All and Now I\u2019m Nothing reps Philadelphia\u2019s central role in this century\u2019s pop-punk and emo scene, which includes bands like Modern Baseball, Algernon Cadwallader, and Marietta. <\/p>\n Singer Dan \u201cSoupy\u201d Campbell is frank about struggling with his mental health on the song\u2019s coda, repeated three times: \u201cI came out swinging from a South Philly basement, caked in stale beer and sweat under half-lit fluorescents,\u201d Campbell sings (and shouts). \u201cAnd I spent the winter writing songs about getting better, well, if I\u2019m being honest, I\u2019m getting there.\u201d<\/p>\n 21. Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, \u201cThe Skin Of My Yellow Country Teeth\u201d<\/p>\n To be honest, I didn\u2019t like this song by the Philly band led by Alec Ounsworth when it came out in 2005. There\u2019s the unappealing title, and I never understood the Talking Heads comparisons, other than a vocal similarity to David Byrne.<\/p>\n But with its driving, hypnotic rhythm, it\u2019s aged well and is a great example of a Philly band at the center of a moment in music history. It\u2019s a \u201cblog-rock\u201d success story from a time when the internet seemed like a wide-open, not malignant place. Bands like CYHSY could make their music available for free download on MP3 blogs and create a buzz that spread like wildfire, resulting in a career still going strong two decades later. Those were the days. <\/p>\n 20. Go To Blazes, \u201cNew Morning Sun\u201d<\/p>\n Hard-hitting Philly roots-rockers Go To Blazes made a series of bruising blues- and country-infused albums in the 1990s, each one marked by high-quality songwriting by singer Ted Warren and guitarist Tom Heyman that, in retrospect, was ahead of the Americana boom to come. This swaggering song from 1996\u2019s Eric \u201cRoscoe\u201d Ambel-produced Waiting Around for the Crash faces the day after a restless night: \u201cI can\u2019t sleep, for the things I have done.\u201d<\/p>\n 19. Phyllis Hyman, \u201cOld Friend\u201d <\/p>\n Written by 2026 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee Linda Creed \u2014 who died of cancer months before the song\u2019s 1986 release \u2014 \u201cOld Friend\u201d is a melancholy ballad by the statuesque Philly soul singer on her first album for Philadelphia International Records. A modest hit, it became a sentimental fan favorite, particularly after Hyman\u2019s death in 1995 at age 45.<\/p>\n 18. Bill Haley & His Comets, \u201cRock Around the Clock\u201d<\/p>\n With his kiss curl and clean-cut image, Bill Haley presented as more palatable to middle America than subversive 1950s sorts like Elvis Presley, Little Richard, and Chuck Berry. But that doesn\u2019t mean Haley didn\u2019t have a sizable pop-cultural impact. With 1954\u2019s \u201cRock Around The Clock,\u201d which was written by Max C. Freedman and James E. Myers, the singer and bandleader who transitioned from Western swing to rock and roll and grew up in Boothwyn in Delaware County<\/a>, scored the first rock-and-roll song to top the pop charts in both the U.S. and the U.K.<\/p>\n 17. The Three Degrees, \u201cWhen Will I See You Again.\u201d <\/p>\n My first exposure to this Gamble and Huff composition with a lead vocal by Sheila Ferguson and support from Fayette Pinkney and Valerie Holiday came from an episode of the 1970s sitcom Sanford and Son in which the Philly soul vocal trio guest-starred as themselves. Another fun fact: In the \u201870s, the Three Degrees were the favorite group of the now-king, Charles III and performed at his 30th birthday party at Buckingham Palace in 1978 when he was known only as Prince Charles. <\/p>\n 16. Benny Golson and the Philadelphians, \u201cI Remember Clifford.\u201d <\/p>\n Hard-bop saxophonist Golson \u2014 with a band that included his fellow Philly natives Percy Heath, Lee Morgan, Ray Bryant, and Philly Joe Jones \u2014 paid tribute to Delaware trumpeter Clifford Brown, who died in a car accident in Pennsylvania in 1956 at 25. The song has been covered by dozens of artists, including Ray Charles and Sonny Rollins.<\/p>\n 15. Sylk 130, \u201cThe Reason.\u201d <\/p>\n Philly DJ, producer and Blacktronika professor King Britt put his own 1990s house music spin on classic Philly soul with his Sylk 130 project. Jafar Barron\u2019s haunting trumpet and Vicki Miles\u2019 seductive vocal add a touch of class.<\/p>\n 14. The Jacksons, \u201cEnjoy Yourself.\u201d<\/p>\n Yes, Michael Jackson recorded in Philadelphia. In the years between the Motown era with the Jackson 5 and his partnership with Quincy Jones, Michael and his brothers recorded as the Jacksons at Sigma Sound Studios on both 1976\u2019s The Jacksons and 1977\u2019s Goin\u2019 Places. On the former, the songs were written by Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff. The upbeat \u201cEnjoy Yourself\u201d was the biggest hit from the Jacksons\u2019 Philly years, and the one song from the era that points forward to the unstoppable alchemy that Michael and Jones would find starting with Off the Wall in 1979. <\/p>\n 13. Jimmy Smith, \u201cWalk on the Wild Side\u201d<\/p>\n Norristown<\/a> native Jimmy Smith revolutionized the Hammond B-3 organ as an instrument central to jazz and was the leading light of the long lineage of Philly organists, that includes Shirley Scott, Charles Earland, Jimmy McGriff, Trudy Pitts, and Papa John DeFrancesco and Joey DeFrancesco.<\/p>\n \u201cWalk on the Wild Side\u201d is not the Lou Reed song. It\u2019s an instrumental version of the Brook Benton song from a 1962 film noir. Later that year, Smith \u2014 whose music would later be sampled by hip-hop artists including the Beastie Boys, Nas, and Gang Starr \u2014 scored an unlikely hit from his album Bashin\u2019: The Unpredictable Jimmy Smith.<\/p>\n 12. Dee Dee Sharp, \u201cMashed Potato Time.\u201d<\/p>\n A 1962 dance-craze song by Kal Mann and Bernie Lowe that borrowed from the Marvelettes\u2019 \u201cPlease Mr. Postman.\u201d The Orlons sang backup vocals on the No. 1 hit from the American Bandstand era, when Philadelphia was the center of the pop music industry until Dick Clark moved the show to California in 1963. <\/p>\n 11. Nina Simone, \u201cMississippi Goddam\u201d<\/p>\n Nina Simone grew up in North Carolina as Eunice Waymon, the name she went by when she moved to West Philadelphia<\/a> in 1950 with a plan to study at the Curtis Institute of Music. Her application was denied, which she attributed to racism, a characterization the Curtis and many historians<\/a> have disputed. <\/p>\n But her failure to gain acceptance spurred reinvention: She adopted the stage name Nina Simone while playing piano and singing at the Mid-Town Bar & Grill in Atlantic City<\/a>. A great career as an artist and civil rights activist followed. There are many songs to choose from \u2014 \u201cSinnerman,\u201d \u201cFeeling Good\u201d\u2014 but I\u2019m going with her most urgent and arresting, written in part as a response to the murder of Medgar Evers in 1963.<\/p>\n 10. G. Love & Special Sauce, \u201cI-76\u201d <\/p>\n It might not be the best advice, but it does rhyme: \u201cIf you want to get downtown real quick, the only way to go is I-76.\u201d Garrett Dutton\u2019s ode to the Schuylkill<\/a> Expressway from the hip-hop bluesman\u2019s 1997 album Yeah, It\u2019s That Easy includes shout-outs to Sixers players and mascot from the 1983 championship year: \u201cBig Shot, and Mo Cheeks and Moses Malone \/ Julius Erving called Philly his home.\u201d<\/p>\n 9. The A\u2019s, \u201cAfter Last Night\u201d<\/p>\n A ripping power-pop masterwork that showcases the magnetism of Richard Bush, the lead singer of the A\u2019s, the New Wave-era band that energized the Philly club scene before breaking up in 1982. One of two killer A\u2019s singles written by Bush \u2014 who performs locally with his band the Peace Creeps \u2014 and songwriting partner Rocco Notte, along with \u201cA Woman\u2019s Got the Power.\u201d<\/p>\n 8. Laura Nyro, \u201cGonna Take A Miracle\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cGonna Take A Miracle\u201d is a case study in how Kenny Gamble, Leon Huff, Thom Bell, and Sigma Sound Studios founder Joe Tarsia turned Philadelphia into a music mecca in the early 1970s.<\/p>\n Nyro was a New York songwriter three albums into her career when she came to Sigma Sound in 1971 to record an album of cover songs with LaBelle \u2014 the trio of Patti LaBelle<\/a>, Nona Hendryx, and Sarah Dash, who would explode in popularity with \u201cLady Marmalade\u201d three years later. <\/p>\n The Gonna Take a Miracle album was produced by Gamble and Huff, and featured the MFSB Sigma house band, with horn and string arrangements by Bell and Bobby Martin. And the title cut, originally a hit for the Royalettes in 1965, is cowritten by Teddy Randazzo, one of Bell\u2019s musical heroes. <\/p>\n 7. John Legend and the Roots, \u201cWake Up Everybody\u201d <\/p>\n For their 2010 collaborative album Wake Up!, mostly made up of covers of socially conscious R&B songs, Penn grad Legend and the Philly hip-hop band picked a winner. Sure, Legend isn\u2019t equal to Teddy Pendergrass, who sang the original version of the John Whitehead-, Gene McFadden- and Victor Carstarphen-penned title cut from Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes\u2019 1975 album. But then, who is?<\/p>\n 6. The Tymes, \u201cSo Much In Love\u201d <\/p>\n Swoony street corner harmony from 1963, written by Tymes singers George Williams and Roy Straigis with producer Billy Jackson, who voices the spoken intro. A hit on the Cameo-Parkway label in pre-Beatles doo-wop era, it was later a hit for R&B vocal group All-4-One in 1993.<\/p>\n 5. Robert Hazard & the Heroes, \u201cEscalator Of Life\u201d<\/p>\n Along with the Hooters and Tommy Conwell & the Young Rumblers \u2014 whose \u201cI\u2019m Not Your Man\u201d is a near miss on this list \u2014 Robert Hazard was one of the most-likely-to-succeed faces of Philadelphia rock in the 1980s. The son of a Philadelphia Opera Company tenor wrote and recorded \u201cGirls Just Want To Have Fun\u201d in 1979, four years before Cyndi Lauper turned it into a megahit. Hazard was in heavy rotation on FM stations WMMR and WYSP with this echoey electro-pop hit and \u201cChange Reaction,\u201d from his self-titled 1982 EP. <\/p>\n 4. Grover Washington Jr., \u201cEast River Drive\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cJust The Two of Us,\u201d Washington\u2019s 1980 team-up with Bill Withers, was the much bigger hit. Will Smith repurposed it for a different song of the same name on 1997\u2019s Big Willie Style. And \u201cMister Magic,\u201d the nine-minute jazz-R&B jam that\u2019s the title cut from his 1975 album is another Grover contender. But I\u2019m going to go geographical on this smooth-jazz mood piece from the Philly saxophonist, who cruised down what is now Kelly Drive on his 1981 album Come Morning.<\/p>\n 3. Sister Sledge, \u201cWe Are Family\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cYou couldn\u2019t find room for Sister Sledge\u2019s \u201cWe Are Family\u201d on a list of 76 songs?\u201d was a refrain I heard in various forms. In excluding it I might have given too much weight to the fact that \u201cWe Are Family\u201d became closely associated with Pittsburgh after the Pirates used it as their theme song on the way to winning the World Series<\/a> in 1979. <\/p>\n In any case, \u201cWe Are Family\u201d endures, well beyond its origins as a 1979 disco hit that was the first song penned by Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards outside of their own band, Chic. Kathy Sledge delivered a stirring version of it with the Roots at the One Philly concert on the Ben Franklin Parkway on July 4, and just the other night, I heard it at a Phillies game. <\/p>\n 2. Maze, \u201cBefore I Let Go\u201d<\/p>\n Frankie Beverly grew up in Germantown<\/a> and didn\u2019t hit his stride as a purveyor of smooth, sensual soul music until moving to San Francisco in the 1970s. Over time, songs like \u201cJoy & Pain\u201d and \u201cBefore I Let Go,\u201d sung by Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts<\/a>\u2019 favorite musician became essential to Black culture, as \u201cthe soundtrack of cookouts and summer music fests \u2026 and that kind of bliss that is sweet and peaceful,\u201d as novelist S.A. Cosby put it when Beverly died in 2024.<\/a> Beyonc\u00e9 covered \u201cBefore I Let Go\u201d at Coachella in 2018, and Questlove has called the song \u201cthe happiest breakup song ever\u201d and \u201cthe national anthem.\u201d<\/p>\n 1. Jazmine Sullivan, \u201cPick Up Your Feelings\u201d <\/p>\n The standout track from Sullivan\u2019s 2021 tour de force Heaux Tales is full of the soaring, swooping vocal runs and staccato syncopations. Along with other hits like \u201cBust Your Windows,\u201d it demonstrates why Sullivan is the premier contemporary embodiment of the grand Philly soul tradition of great vocalists like Patti LaBelle, Teddy Pendergrass, and Russell Thompkins Jr.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Listen to article \u2022\u00a00:00 min Only 76 songs to encapsulate the history of the boundlessly rich and impossibly…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":284401,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[118595,69,71,70],"class_list":["post-284400","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia","tag-25-more-essential-philly-songs-nina-simone-jazmine-sullivan","tag-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia-headlines","tag-philadelphia-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284400","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=284400"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284400\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/284401"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=284400"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=284400"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=284400"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}