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There's a famous New Yorker cartoon, entitled View of the World from 9th Avenue, in which everything west of the Hudson river is an irrelevant blur. It both spoofs and flatters New Yorkers' conviction, expressed in John dos Passos's Manhattan Transfer (the novel, not the authorised biography of the 1970s jazz-pop combo), that their town is "the centre of things". Whether you're listening to Leonard Bernstein's New York, New York or BDP's hip-hop creation myth South Bronx, you'll hear the same message: this is the only city that counts. When it comes to pop music, from Broadway and the Brill Building to disco, punk and rap, they have a point.
I wanted songs that addressed New York itself, rather than crypto- fascism (First We Take Manhattan), touring (No Sleep Till Brooklyn) or Art Garfunkel's movie career (The Only Living Boy in New York). It's a hard place to...