City Shout Outs

"Hey, Kansas City! You have hard water!"

A simple and blatant tactic for pandering to your audience is to simply state the location where they live. Live performers, especially during a tour, will often open their performance by saying, "Hello, [city name]!" Certain commercials will try to target specific cities by addressing the viewer as the city, regardless of whether they're a tourist or only live close to the city.

Naturally, a Sub-Trope of Shout-Out. Compare Cheap Heat, when a pro wrestler talks about the city to appeal to or rile up the local fans, and Listing Cities, when several cities are mentioned during the song to cause this effect.

If the performer doesn't know the name of the city they're playing in, it may be a warning sign they've had too much Sex, Drugs, and Rock & Roll.

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Examples:

Advertising

• The advertising campaign for Zest Hard Water Soap, quoted above. They basically had one template commercial and they rewrote it for each city being advertised to. It was quirky, but most probably expensive because of the customization.
• There was a series Hidden Valley Ranch commercials set in "local" cities. However, the commercial doesn't look like it was set in the city they say it was.
• A Southwest Airlines commercial has a band playing to a room full of screaming fans, and the lead singer ends the set "Thank you, Detroit!". The room falls silent, the fans all look at each other in confusion, and another band member turns to the lead singer and says "Detroit was last night". Cut to the "Wanna Get Away?" tag line of the commercial.
• McDonalds:
  • In 2007 the company aired a commercial featuring Mac Tonight promoting that the restaurant is open for all 24 hours. Near the end, he namedrops whatever city the ad is broadcasted in. In this particular version, he says, "Chill out, Singapore!"
  • McDonalds also spoofed this trope when they brought out a line of Indian-themed food in their UK branches. Their commercials were filmed in the style of a 1970s cinema ad for local Indian restaurants. These were very, very cheaply made; they'd film one scene inside a generic Indian restaurant set and then tack on a voiceover —obviously recorded in a different session- and a static image giving the actual name of the place and usually some directions. The McDonalds ads reproduced the effect faithfully, grainy footage, cheesiness and all.
• Frank Gari's "Hello News" image campaign for local TV stations was a musical version of this trope. Not only was the name of the city switched, the lyrics were often changed as well to mention the local area's geographic features among other things. See a montage of these campaigns here.

Anime & Manga

• Hellsing Ultimate: Jan Valentine's address to Sir Integra and the Round Table Conference is played for horror in an attack that happens to be led by a funny man; the English dub goes so far as to have him declare like a rock star, "Thank you, London! We love you! GOODNIGHT!"

Comedy

• There's a joke about a British comedian on tour who always opens his act by shouting out the name of the town he's visiting, eg "Hello, Cardiff!". This usually goes down well, until he happens to play a Ladies' Night in Cowes, Isle of Wight.
• In 1968 Pat Paulsen, a comedian who became popular on the Smother's Brothers show, "ran" for president. He would fly into a town, get off the plane and give a speech which always included the sentence, "I've been all over the United States, and met all kinds of people, but the people of are the best in the country." Someone put together a video of him saying just that sentence in town after town. ["Picky, picky, picky!"]
• Billy Connolly sent this up in a sketch about a cheesy Country and Western singer who walks on stage and begins:
  Hey, y'all, it's really great to be with all you lovely people and to be back here in... back here in... back here in... (turns to the wings) hey, Hank! Where the fuck are we tonight? I know it's Scotland or somewhere...
• Michael Mcintyre's comedy roadshow had him open every episode with a reference to the current location being his favorite city in the world.
• Subverted by Ed Byrne during his Alanis Morissette segment.
  I did a gig a while back in High Wycombe. Which is a lovely place, if there's anybody watching. But it's not if there's nobody.

Comic Books

• Sensation Comics Featuring Wonder Woman: Diana shouts, "Thank you Athens!" during her concert in "Bullets and Bracelets".
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic (IDW): The "My Little Pony: FIENDship Is Magic" prequel about the Sirens has the villains deliver a "Hello, Canterlot!" as they get rolling.

Fan Works

• The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged): The reason why Adam (or "the Adam character") disappears in the interval is often a nod to the city it's being performed in (when it was performed in Inverness, he was looking for the Loch Ness Monster).
• Undertale the Musical: Mettaton has a habit of asking the crowd, "Are you alive, Hotland?", which is definitely meant to evoke a similar effect. At the end of "Death by Glamour", his last thought on the matter is a straight, "I LOVE YOU HOTLAAAND!"
• With Pearl and Ruby Glowing: Done in a rather unflattering manner in the in-universe ads for a rape survivors' support group and a personal injury lawyer, stating the viewer needs them because Calisota is such a Wretched Hive.

Films — Animation

• Shrek 2: At the "Red Carpet"-styled royal ball, the Fairy Godmother lets fly with "Hello, Far, Far Away!" while stepping out of her flying transportation.
• Played for Laughs at the start of Puss in Boots: The Last Wish: Puss greets the crowd at his party this way, but gets the city wrong and has to be corrected.
• The Simpsons Movie: Inverted. Russ Cargill is attempting to explain that Springfield has become the most polluted town on record, causing the government to encase the whole area in a giant dome. He's interrupted by a guy in the crowd yelling "Whoo, Springfield!"
• Turning Red:
  • Robaire starts the 4*Town concert with "Toronto! Who knows what's up?".
  • Mei, in her red panda form, later does the same at the end, saying "What up, Toronto! Get in here!" when welcoming everyone to the Lee family temple.

Films — Live-Action

• Godzilla and Mothra: The Battle for Earth: If you look closely as Mothra charges through Tokyo to save the Cosmos Twins, you can see that she passes by the headquarters of Bandai Namco (back then simply called "Namco") on her way to Yokohama.
• Monty Python at the Hollywood Bowl: The Straight Man in the Nudge Nudge sketch claims his wife was born in Glendale (and gets a huge cheer for it).
• Hocus Pocus: The Sanderson sisters hijack Max's warning by treating it as if he was introducing their musical number (aka "I Put a Spell on You"). Furthermore, they enchant the party-goers by getting them to engage with the song. Once she's got their interest piqued, Winifred salutes the city of Salem.
  Winifred: Helle Salem! My name's Winifred, what's yours?
• This is Spın̈al Tap: Parodied as the band gets lost behind the stage in Chicago, and one of the band members yells "Hello, Cleveland!"

Literature

• Soul Music: Buddy is so out of it, he can't remember what city he's in.
  Buddy: Hello ... hells, Glod, tell me where we are ... Sto Lat! Yay!

Live-Action TV

• ABBA: The Movie: The film combines actual concert footage from the Australian leg of the group's 1977 tour with a story about a DJ trying to secure an interview with them, Bjorn Ulvaeus greets the audience at their Sydney concert with the words:
  "Hello, Sydney! Very good to see you! I'll tell you one thing - you make us forget the rain! Let's hope we can make you forget it too!" ^note The Sydney concert took place during a torrential downpour.
• Bottom:
  • Subverted. In one of the Live stage shows, taped in Southend, Eddie claims to have been born in Southend. "Whyever did you leave?" cries Richie. "I found the railway station," replies Eddie. Later on during an ad-lib storm Rik Mayall drops out of character to say something along the lines of, "Let's hurry up and get back to the script or we'll never get out of fucking Southend!"
  • In a later show being performed in Nottingham, the duo suddenly realise that they are on stage at the mercy of a feral Nottingham audience. Richie assures Eddie that he 'speaks the lingo' of the audience and will soon have them eating out of his hand... And then launches into a series of barely unintelligible grunts and every other syllable is 'fuck'.
• Corner Gas: In "Comedy Night", Lacey gets revenge on a comedian Brent has a grudge against by convincing him that he is in Wullerton, not Dog River. As a result, he makes all of his shout-outs to Wullerton, Dog River's archrival, and nearly gets lynched as a result.
• That '70s Show: Referenced in the opening. After the theme tune, someone shouts "Hello Wisconsin!", the state the show takes place in.

Magazines

• MAD: One feature on boy bands (the same one as the Trope Namer for Cardiovascular Love) suggests to producers that boy bands can be made to look less formulaic than they are by allowing them to express a little of their "spontaneous side":
  Exactly 43 minutes into your Friday night stage show, one member might yell, "Let me hear you scream, Miami!" But the next night, he should feel totally free to change this to "Let me hear you scream, Orlando!" At the 43-minute mark, of course; let's not go completely nuts. But that sort of freewheeling improvisation is what makes or breaks a live performance.

Music

• Blue Öyster Cult:
  • "Atlanta, Georgia!", "Poughkeepsie, New York!"
  • Their live cover version of The Animals' "We Gotta Get Out Of This Place" was recorded in Newcastle, England: Homage to the hometown of Eric Burdon and Alan Price, and a City Shout-Out by inference.
  • In their live cover of The Doors' "Roadhouse Blues", Eric Bloom namechecks Los Angeles, causing a huge roar from the crowd.
• Johnny Cash: A variation in "Cocaine Blues" from Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison, where he sings "99 years in the Folsom pen", instead of the original line "99 years in the San Quentin pen" (and of course, San Quentin was where he recorded his next live prison album).
• Drake: In "Fancy", one stanza talks directly to the girls of whatever city he's performing in about how they should be confident in themselves.
  Atlanta/NY/LA/TO(Toronto) girls, let me see your hands
  Wave 'em at them bitches hating on you with their friends
  Girl you got it
  Let 'em know that everything big
  Nails done, hair done, everything did
• Green Day: The band has two cases where the location of the concert replaces the original from American Idiot: the city in "from Anaheim to the Middle East" ("Jesus of Suburbia") and the state in "the representative of California has the floor" ("Holiday"). When the later song "Youngblood" was in the setlist, they did the same in the line "fuck you, I'm from Oakland!"
• Huey Lewis and the News: "The Heart of Rock and Roll" gets this in live performances. There's also a regional version that mentions Syracuse and Albany, NY, as well as West Coast and East Coast versions for Canadian radio, with the former mentioning Vancouver and the latter mentioning Toronto and Montreal.
• Iron Maiden: Bruce Dickinson's catchphrase is "Scream for me, [insert name of country/city]!" whenever the band performs their self-titled song, this is also a cue for Eddie to appear.
• Jay-Z: Edits of the chorus of "Empire State of Mind" change the city name to another city, with no other changes... which ignores the fact that the entire song is a love letter to New York City. Apparently, the listeners are supposed to believe that Hova thinks those things make our cities awesome, too.
• Waylon Jennings: "Luckenbach, Texas" (yes, it's a real town, though neither Jennings nor the song's writers had ever been there at the time).
• Kesha: "Tik Tok" has a customized version on at least one Nashville radio station that had a rewritten intro verse (that included Nashville and "because I'm from this city!") and included one of the station's DJs' name in the place of the word "DJ" in the chorus. ^note It sounded real at the time, but as there don't seem to be any records of this version online it could have been a station edit.
• LMFAO: "I'm In Miami Bitch" has been re-edited for various other cities: "I'm in Chicago Bitch," "I'm in LA Bitch" etc. Nothing changes except the city name.
• Ludacris: In the remix to "Welcome to Atlanta", Jermaine Dupri, P. Diddy, Snoop Dogg, and Murphy Lee rave about their hometowns as well —New York, Los Angeles, and St. Louis respectively. This song spawned a small meme among hip-hop fans, adding verses about their hometowns if it wasn't one of the above.
• Santana: When the band played at Woodstock 1969, after the opening song "Waiting", Carlos Santana greeted the crowd and had a brief moment of confusion over what state he was in.
  Carlos Santana: Thanks very much. It's nice to be here in New York. Are we— we are in New York? Yeah...
• Frank Sinatra: "My Kind Of Town" has a published footnote saying that "Any city name of three syllables can replace Chicago; such as Manhattan, Las Vegas, etc."
• Starship: "We Built This City" had a version recorded without the San Francisco-themed DJ pattern, so that local DJs could insert their own shoutouts.
• They Might Be Giants: The band had a tour in which they wrote a song about each venue they visited and then performed the song at the venue. By all accounts, they were good songs, too! Darn musical geniuses.
• Tom Lehrer: The fourth verse of "Pollution" has local variants for New York City ("The breakfast garbage they throw out in Troy/They drink for lunch in Perth Amboy") and San Francisco ("The breakfast garbage that you throw in the Bay/They drink for lunch in San José").
• UFO: The band invariably gets a huge cheer in their performance of "Lights Out in London" by substituting the name of the night's venue for "London" at a set point in the song.
  lights out, lights out, Chicago!
• When Wang Chung plays "Everybody Have Fun Tonight" in live shows, they'll amend the song's opening line, "I'll drive a million miles to be with you tonight", to "I drove a million miles to be in [locale name] tonight".

Professional Wrestling

• This tends to happen as a normal course in professional wrestling. WWE and TNA definitely tour. Mick Foley is well known for his Cheap Pops "right here in [name of town]!"
• “FINALLY... The Rock has come back to [name of town]!!!!!”

Radio

• The D-Pad: To Worcester, Boston, and Somerville, where the show has been recorded over the years. Also occasionally to Providence, RI, and New Haven, CT.

Theatre

• Forbidden Broadway:
  • In "Ambition" (a spoof of "Tradition", the opening number of Fiddler on the Roof), there's a line that on the cast album goes, "But here in our little village of Manhattan, there are over 50,000 actors, all trying their best not to end up in Baltimore." When on tour, "Baltimore" usually gets changed to the town they are performing in.
  • "Look Around (The Schuyler Puppets)" had the cast sing about "all the new shows happening in New York, we said New York..." then they look at how "yucky" the shows are and go "New Yuck!" (Chris Anthony Giles makes a "finger to mouth to cause vomiting motion" in some of the clips of this song being performed.)
• Jesus Christ Superstar: In the 2018 TV production, Alice Cooper as King Herod belts out during the instrumental break, "HELLO, JERUSALEM! I AM YOUR KING!"
• Quidam: The newspaper Father is reading in the opening sequence is that of whatever city the show is performing in.
• Zarkana: The first image the sand painter creates is that of the city the show is being performed in, marking the theater as specifically located in it.

Web Video

• Todd in the Shadows: During his review of Lady Gaga's "You and I", Todd notes the phenomenon of local radio stations dubbing in references to their home cities or states in the lyrics of songs in order to do this. He specifically mentioning how his station changes the "Nebraska" line in the song to "Virginia", and that it seems to be the same all around for the rest of the country.

Western Animation

• Duck Dodgers: One of the instructions on being a rock star is "When you're unsure of where you are, just yell 'Thank you, Detroit!' There's a 47% chance you'll be right." And of course it's the episode's closing line.
• The Simpsons:
  • In "Flaming Moe's", as Aerosmith starts to perform at Moe's, Steven Tyler yells "Hello, St. Louis!", before being corrected by Joe Perry.
  • "The Otto Show": The Spinal Tap members use this to rev up the Springfieldians, though David St. Hubbins needs the name of the town taped to the back of his guitar to remember it, and when they're forced to end the set he says "Good night, Springton" by mistake.
  • One of the chalkboard gags read, "I will not say 'Springfield' just to get applause".
  • "New Kids on the Blecch": A quartet of students overtly engineered to be the "Party Posse" boy band debuts on the stage of the Springfield Elementary auditorium. The following follows:
    Bart: Hello, Springfield! Now here's a song that your Principal Skinner doesn't want us to play!
    Audience: [booing]
    Principal Skinner: That's not true! This assembly was my idea. I like your inoffensive brand of pop-rock!
    Bart: Screw you, man, we're gonna play it anyway!
  • "How I Spent My Strummer Vacation": Discussed by Mick Jagger, who advises the rock star wannabes that they always have to compliment the city they are playing in.
    Mick Jagger: And no matter where you are, you always say 'It's the wildest town in the whole damn world'.
    Chief Wiggum: So, when you said it in Springfield last year, you didn't mean it?
    Mick: (pausing) Yeah, sure I did, but only because Springfield really is the wildest town in the whole damn world!
    (everyone cheers)
  • In "Trash Of the Titans", Homer interrupts a U2 concert in Springfield so he can promote his campaign for Springfield's Sanitation Commissioner.
    Bono: Now, Homer, I hear Ray Patterson's a fine public servant. Why should the people of Springfield...
    Audience: (cheering)
    Bono: ...why should they vote for you?
    Homer: That's a good question, Bono. 'Cause I'd be the most whack, tripped-out sanitation commissioner ever! Can you dig it?
    (dead silence, leading Homer to try and dance, prompting boos from the audience)
    Bono: Wow, look at him go. You're the real Lord of the Dance, Homer.
    (Bono gestures to the security guards to take Homer away)
• Winx Club: From the fourth season onward, the Winx form a music band to help Musa pursue her dreams. Whenever they are performing in Gardenia, Bloom salutes the city at the beginning of the concert.

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