Items18The creator’s order
- 1
SampaSão Paulo. Veloso places the listener at the corner of Ipiranga and São João, then remembers how hard the city was to take in when he first arrived. His recognition of the city grows as the song goes on. The intersection gives that change of feeling somewhere to happen.0 - 2
Waterloo SunsetLondon. Terry and Julie meet at Waterloo Station on a Friday night and cross the Thames. The narrator mainly stays put, so what he sees from the window and what the couple finds across the river have different kinds of intimacy. Listen for the way the crowd and the river sit alongside that private…0 - 3
Confusion (Parts 1 & 2)Lagos. Fela describes a city where people meet to trade without a shared language and where traffic can test even an expert driver. The long opening takes its time before the vocal starts making those observations. Once he begins, the chorus answers him as if his frustrations are familiar to…0 - 4
Lisboa Menina e MoçaLisbon. The hills become part of a woman the singer addresses. Graça gives him a vantage point, so the affectionate portrait has somewhere you could stand. Hear how the lyrics move between the contours of the city and the way someone might describe a person they know well.0 - 5
Posse on BroadwaySeattle. The ride takes the crew up Broadway and on to Dick’s Drive-In on Capitol Hill. Sir Mix-A-Lot remembers Broadway as a place he and his friends actually went to hang out. You hear Seattle as a route his crew already knows by heart.0 - 6
Balada para un locoBuenos Aires. The spoken opening imagines someone stepping out on Arenales, then the moon rolls down Callao as an everyday walk turns into a fantasy. Baltar’s shift from speaking to singing lets you hear the moment the familiar city starts to behave differently.0 - 7
Ae Dil Hai Mushkil Jeena Yahan (Yeh Hai Bombay Meri Jaan)Mumbai, then Bombay. The song’s list of motor traffic, trams, mills, and buildings draws a city that is growing fast and hard to live in. One voice reels off its troubles and the other makes a different case for getting by there. The tune lets the two sides of that argument share the same street.0 - 8
DeprestonMelbourne. A trip to see a house in Preston turns up a handrail in the shower and an old photograph of a young man in Vietnam. You can hear why a house hunter would call them incidental and why Barnett keeps thinking about them. She gets at a changing suburb by spending time inside one place.0 - 9
Aquele abraçoRio de Janeiro. Gil calls out Realengo, the Portela samba school, and the television host Chacrinha in a string of greetings. The effect is like hearing someone say goodbye to several parts of the city at once. The places and the people get much the same warmth in his voice.0 - 10
TokyoTokyo. While people prepare to pull a car from the river, Cockburn takes in traffic fumes, pachinko machines, and office workers. His focus keeps cutting from the accident to the city carrying on around it. That restless movement gives the song its sense of a visitor trying to take too much in at…0
