Listing Cities

"We on Award Tour with Mohammad my man.
Goin' each and every place with a mic in our hand.
Houston, Delaware, D.C., Dallas!"

— A Tribe Called Quest, "Award Tour"

A Music Trope. So you're writing a new track and you want it to be a hit in Boston. One obvious way to do this is to make your song all about how awesome Boston is. This creates a special connection with listeners in Boston.

But what if you want your song to be a hit everywhere? Since you can't write a song about how awesome every city in the world is, the next best thing is just to list off a bunch of random cities, regions, or whatever. This surprisingly popular tactic creates a momentary connection with people from many different places.

A type of List Song. Compare City Shout Outs, when a live performer appeals to the audience by saluting their city.

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Examples:

Acid House

• The JAMs' (aka The KLF) "Grim Up North" lists towns in the north of England. No rhyming or anything.
  • Also (as The KLF), the full-length version of America: What Time Is Love? has a lengthy section of Shout Outs to USA-an cities and states.

Alternative Metal

Alternative Rock

• Concrete Blonde's "Close to Home" lists a bunch of cities across the south of the United States - but none of them are home.
• "Going Nowhere Slow" by Bloodhound Gang lists an impressive amount of cities rather quickly.
• "Flavor" by the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion lists several cities where "The Blues is number one."

Blues-Rock

• Steve Miller's "Rock'n Me":
  I went from Phoenix, Arizona
  All the way to Tacoma
  Philadelphia, Atlanta, L.A.
  Northern California
  Where the girls are warm
  So I could be with my sweet baby, yeah
• John Mayer rattles off the names of a few U.S. cities where "it's been a long night" in the chorus of "Who Says".
• "Peace Frog" by The Doors plays with this when Jim Morrison lists riots during the hippie/peace movement of The '60s:
  "Blood in the streets of the town of New Haven.
  Blood stains the roofs and the palm trees of Venice
  Blood in my love in the terrible summer
  Bloody red sun of Phantastic L.A.
  ''There's blood in the streets it's up to my ankles...
  Blood in the streets of the town of Chicago..."

Brazilian Rock

• Brazilian variations: band Os Paralamas do Sucesso lists three slums in the chorus for "Alagados" ("Alagados, Trenchtown ^note practically everyone hears this one wrong, Favela da Maré") and singer Tim Maia names a lot of Rio de Janeiro beaches in "Do Leme ao Pontal" (besides the two in the title, "Flamengo, Botafogo, Urca, Praia Vermelha!"). He also names beaches throughout the Brazilian coastline in "O Descobridor dos Sete Mares".

Classical

• The Deutschlandlied (Germany Song), which serves as the German National Anthem, has the following lines in its first stanza, here translated for your convenience:
  From the Meuse to the Memel,
  from the Adige to the Little Belt.
  • The problem: None of this four bodies of water do even touch with the contemporary German state. This is one of several reasons why this stanza isn't part of the official anthem anymore.

Comedy/Parody

• "I'm From Delaware" by Todd Chappelle is a parody of Johnny Cash's cover of "I've Been Everywhere" and much like the original, lists all the cities and towns of Delaware.
• The Amateur Transplants, when doing gigs, parody this trope by singing a song about how much they love the city, where the city in question turns out to be something along the lines of "Edinburgh, Birmingham, Manchester, Bournemouth and Crewe".
• "He Broke My Heart in Three Places" by Spike Jones starts off with big cities (Seattle, Chicago, and New York) and ends up with a long fast list of small towns and other locations.
• Mitch Benn:
  • His reaction to the Post Office deleting county names from its database was a song about postcode areas.
    Too long it's been since I've last seen the hills of IV51 ^note  The Isle of Skye,
    And from the shores of LL54 ^note  Caernarfon for far too long I'm gone,
    I long to wander over BA6^note  Glastonbury's fields of green,
    But I was stuck for years and years in SW16 ^note  Streatham and Norbury, London.
  • "The South Downs Cowboy" is about the eponymous cowboy travelling to various locations in the South Downs, with a final verse about how Mitch had to look them all up.
• Three Dead Trolls in a Baggie's "Toronto Song". Starts out on the subject of how much Toronto sucks, moves on to how much the rest of Ontario sucks, concludes with how much the rest of Canada sucks.
• Tom Lehrer lapses into this for Russian cities in the middle of his song about the great Russian mathematician, Nikolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky, on Songs by Tom Lehrer.
• Ninja Sex Party's "Road Trip" starts with a list of American cities, and the various sex acts that Danny Sexbang has performed there. It moves on to other countries, before ending up with Danny going to space to have sex with aliens, but then dying because he forgot to bring a space suit.
• Fraktus have "A.D.A.M." ("All die armen Menschen"; "All those poor humans") which lists up 32 different places in Germany, just to pity the people who live there for living there and wonder why they do that in the first place.
  In Gütersloh, Paderborn, Wuppertal, Oldenburg
  Da überall leben Menschen
  In Offenbach, Birkenfeld, Thüringen, Rosenheim
  Da überall sind sie zuhaus
• Sammy Kaye's clean version of "I Used to Work in Chicago" lists eight US cities and Toronto.

Country

• "I've Been Everywhere": Probably the best-known song that features a where's-where of cities, the song rattles off more than 80 cities. Written by Australian country music artist Geoff Mack, the song originally listed Australian and New Zealand cities. Canadian artist Hank Snow rewrote the song to feature North American (and a few South American) place names, and his version has been covered by Lynn Anderson, Johnny Cash, and others. Versions for countries elsewhere in the world exist as well.
• Second verse of "God Bless the USA" by Lee Greenwood:
  From the lakes of Minnesota
  To the hills of Tennessee
  Across the plains of Texas
  And from sea to shining sea
  From Detroit down to Houston
  And New York to LA
  There's pride in every American heart
  And it's time we stand and say...
• Rascal Flatts does the 'general area' type in "Me And My Gang".
• "Comin' to Your City" Big & Rich. Notable for not only including bigger cities like Buffalo and L.A., but also including lesser known cities such as Cincinnati and Jefferson City.
• "Fly Over States" by Jason Aldean mentions several states including Indiana, Oklahoma, and Kansas, and other places such as Amarillo and The Badlands.
• Neal McCoy's "The Shake" does this, in the middle of a song about booty-shaking: "New York, L.A., Houston, Tampa Bay, London, Tokyo, everywhere you go."
• The second verse of George Strait's "If You Can Do Anything Else".
• Several country songs are lists of places that the singer wants to go with his or her lover. Among them are "You Can Sleep While I Drive" by Trisha Yearwood, "Take Me" by Lari White, "Lipstick" by Rockie Lynne, "As Long as You're Going My Way" by The Parks, and "Anywhere with You" by Jake Owen.
• "Favorite State of Mind" by Josh Gracin goes the other way. He lists off a bunch of cities and states, but says that he'd rather be with her than anywhere else:
  Hawaii's got big waves, Michigan Great Lakes
  Colorado snowflakes, Georgia peaches
  Louisiana hot food, New York attitude, Florida beaches
  Tennessee whiskey, baby, are you with me
  Texas chili, Virginia pine
  It's hard to beat that California sunshine
  But baby, you're my favorite, favorite state of mind
• "Wanted Man" by Johnny Cash (co-written by Bob Dylan) lists American states and cities in which the narrator is wanted.
• "Big Joe Mufferaw" by Canadian country star Stompin' Tom Connors is this for towns on the Ottawa River.

Dance

• "Scatman & Hatman", a 2019 track by Lou Bega of "Mambo No. 5" fame that heavily samples Scatman John's eponymous hit, has these lines near the end:
  Everywhere we go
  Welcome to the show
  We can strike a knockout blow
  In London, Rio, Tokyo
• "Flying Around The World" by Eurobeat persona Bazooka Girl:
  We're flying all around the world
  Moscow, Tokyo, to Bangkok
  Coming back to Rome
  Paris and New York

Electro-hop

• LMFAO did a variation on this by putting out a large amount of alternate versions of their single "I'm In Miami Trick", with the chorus re-dubbed to refer to other major US and Canada cities. Since the song is more about partying in general than any attributes of Miami itself, no other lyrical changes are made, however unlikely it might sound for one to be "in the sand with a Red Bull in my hand" in Boise, Idaho.

Electronic

• "Get Ready" by R 2 Swing lists various cities and shows their patriotism by starting with Paris.
• "Breakfast in Berlin" by Julien-K seems to be going for a "partying around the world" thing.
• Kraftwerk's "Trans Europe Express" lists the different cities one can go to on the train system.
• Kirin J Callinan's EDM-country mashup "Big Enough" does this with countries, and in the final lines, religions, in its call for world peace. There's some clever puns in there, too.
  Kenya get it India?
  It's serious in Syria
  Believe in us, Bolivia
  We're Ghana be big enough

Folk

• "This Land Is Your Land" by Woody Guthrie:
  From California to the New York Island
  From the Redwood Forest to the Gulf Stream waters

Note there are many versions for many different countries.

• "Passenger" by Lisa Hannigan is this combined with Wanderlust Song.
• The British marching song "Over the Hills and Far Away" (made famous today by Sharpe) was written to cover the battlefields of the War of the Spanish Succession, but enjoyed a revival a century later in the Napoleonic Wars as British involvement in those conveniently also covered the same countries:
  O'er the hills and o'er the main
  Through Flanders, Portugal and Spain
  King George commands and we obey
  Over the hills and far away.
• "Upstate New York Waltz" by Si Kahn:
  We reunited one night in Oneida,
  We tarried in Tarrytown too.
  I chased her through Utica up into Ithaca,
  Sure that her love would be true.
  But on a safari to Canajoharie
  She was just climbing the walls.
  We barely were speakin'
  When we got to Beacon,
  And broke up in Wappingers Falls.
  I was drowning in pain as she got on the train
  With a ticket that said “To New Paltz”
  I'll never forgive her 'til the band plays that old
  Hudson River Upstate New York Waltz.
• "Losin' Auld Reekie" by Jim Malcom starts off by describing him leaving Edinburgh (nicknamed Auld Reekie), then lists the other towns he goes through on a road trip of the Scottish Lowlands.
  Skiting into Angus, via Kirrie and Padanarum,
  Stopping on the other side of Forfar.
  Well I could have got there quicker,
  But I'm fed up cutting corners,
  Cruisin', losin' Auld Reekie.
• One version of "The Wabash Cannonball" lists seventeen US cities, Montreal and Mexico.

Folk Rock

• "Letter from America" by The Proclaimers lists various Scottish towns, counties and islands that the emigrant to the US is leaving. "Lochaber no more, Sutherland no more, Lewis no more, Skye no more..."
• Tom Waits' song "Don't Go Into That Barn" ends with a list of southern towns that a character - implicitly a fugitive on the run from the law - is passing through. Or, more accurately, he's passing by, or making stops at, while on a riverboat—the first town listed is along a canal in Ohio that was active before the Civil War, while every other one is on either the Ohio or Mississippi River..
  No shirt no coat
  Take me on a flat boat
  Dover, down to Covington
  Covington to Louisville
  Louisville to Henderson
  Henderson to Smithland
  Smithland to Memphis
  Memphis down to to Vicksburg
  Vicksburg to Natchez
  Goin' down to Natchez
  • Also from Tom Waits, "Fish in the Jailhouse" is a song about a prison inmate plotting his Great Escape, and also quickly running through where he's going to go to dodge the law. He, too, is passing through Natchez, Mississippi.
  From Yazoo City down to Rolling Fork
  From Natchez to Kenosha, move down to New York
  • Downplayed in "Pony", where the narrator left Murfreesboro, TN, to wander across Louisiana and Mississippi, namechecking such towns as Belzoni, Hushpukena, Tallulah, and, yes, Natchez.
  • Tomwaitsmap.com is a website mapping out all the places Tom Waits has ever mentioned in song.

Funk Rock

• "Dani California" also counts, which lists off a number of other US states before getting to the titular California.

• "Is Chicago, Is Not Chicago" by Soul Coughing lists various world cities, declaring them to be "in the room". It's a bit of a case of Word Salad Lyrics.

Goth

• Voltaire's song "Ex-Lover's Lover" lists the cities he's going to mail the body parts of his ex's new boyfriend to after chopping him up.
  It would take the most brilliant private eye
  the rest of his life just to put you together,
  a piece in each mailbox all over the planet,
  from Moscow, to Tokyo, to Guadalajara.

Hardcore Hip Hop

• The song "Raw Shit ft. MC Ren & Paris" from the Public Enemy album Rebirth of a Nation includes Flava Flav listing "Public Enemy number one in X", X being, in order, New York, Chicago, Detroit, Oakland, Baltimore, Miami, Indiana, L.A., DC, New Jersey, Cleveland Ohio, Alabama, Tennessee, Mississippi, Philly, Atlanta and St. Louis.

Hard Rock

• Hawkwind's "Damnation Alley", based on the Roger Zelazny novel, subverts this with a list of annihilated places:
  No more Arizona now, Phoenix is fried up
  Oklahoma City, what a pity it's gone
  Louisiana's dealt it and the Missus Hip's dried up
  No more Chattanooga, Cherokee, Lexington

Heavy Metal

• "Blood of the Kings" by Manowar features the shouts of various countries' names with such metal pathos as if they were ProudWarriorRaces (e.g. "SWITZERLAAAND!!! MONACOOO!!! etc.").
  Our armies in England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales
  Our brothers in Belgium, Holland and France
  Will not fail
  Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Italy
  Switzerland, Austria
  Back to the Glory of Germany

Hip Hop

• Lil Kim's song "Lighters Up" lists a lot of places ranging from Bed-Stuy to Kingston, Jamaica
• "Country Grammar" also lists different cities (though it is one of the few songs to proudly proclaim love for St. Louis)
  • What else would you expect from Nelly?
• As a variant, the opening of "Perfect Gentleman" by Wycleff Jean includes a list of what one must assume are the names of 'gentleman's clubs'- "Magic City, New York Dogs, Rolex"
• This trope was endemic with merengue hip-hop singers in the early 90's, specially Proyecto Uno and El General. They couldn't release an album without a song listing all the countries they were having (or hoping to have) success in.
• Sir Mix-A-Lot: "What's up Chicago, what's up? What's up Chicago what's up? Chicago, jump on it, jump on it, jump on it."
  • And in "Square Dance Rap", he names off places that rock according to him: Seattle, L.A., Miami, D.C., Carolina, Houston, Texas, your momma and London, England.
• Tupac's "California Love" shouts out to just about every major city in California towards the end, and L.A., Watts, and Compton are called out to in the actual chorus. San Diego and many cities in the north, though, are conspicuously absent...
• "The Good Life" by Kanye West. Apparently the good life feels like Atlanta, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, Chicago, Houston, Philadelphia, D.C., Virginia Beach, and the Bay area.
• A variation exists in the Ludacris song "Area Codes." Instead of directly naming cities, he instead lists off all the phone number area codes of various locations where he has had one-night stands with women.
• A Tribe Called Quest's "Award Tour", as seen in the page quote. The song lists a total of 32 cities (8 per hook).
• Beastie Boys' "Dedication" consists entirely of Mike D listing off cities / locations. There's some humor to it: a couple of the places are overly specific New York City references, Newcastle, England is singled out as "where Venom come from", and very early in the song, Mike mentions "all galaxies", which logically would have covered everything else that followed.

House

• Global Deejays -0 "The Sound of San Francisco": In addition to the titular San Francisco, this dance track repeatedly lists 14 other major world cities, such as Cape Town and Amsterdam.
• Saint Etienne had a song ("Girl VII") where singer Sarah Cracknell listed off in a monotone a large number of places, many of them London boroughs and places recognisable to Londoners, but also including Pakistan and Buffalo, for example.
• The titular character John from Lemon Jelly's Ramblin' Man has rambled to some 67 different locations.

Indian music

• "Dard-e-Disco" from the film Om Shanti Om has "London Paris New York LA San Francisco"

Indie Folk

• "The 50 States" by Sufjan Stevens seriously name-drops all 50 of the United States. He would use the song to open the show on the tour supporting his Illinois! album.
  • In "They Are Night Zombies", the backing singers name-drop a lot of Illinois cities over the chorus. Looking them up reveals that most of them are ghost towns, or on their way to becoming ghost towns.

Indie Rock

• Girls Against Boys' "Tucked-in":
  New York.
  Chicago, Chicago, Chicago.
  New York.
  Chicago, Chicago, Chicago.
  Los Angeles. There's something nice to be said.

Industrial Metal

New Wave

• "Pop Muzik" by M:
  New York, London, Paris, Munich
  Everybody talk about pop muzik
  • Also an example of Album Title Drop.
• "Hide the Beer, the Pastor's Here" by The Swirling Eddies is a variation. Instead of listing cities, they list seminaries. After the song was published, the Eddies got a bunch of mail from pastors angry that their alma mater was mentioned in the song... and just as many letters from pastors wishing their alma mater had been mentioned.

Nu Metal

• "Show Me What You Got" by Limp Bizkit mentions a whopping forty-one cities before stating that it can't list them all.

Pop

• Katy Perry's "California Gurls" pretty much lists off every major city in California with a beach.
• Manila by Filipino band Hotdog.
  Manila, Manila
  I keep coming back to Manila
  Simply no place like Manila
  Manila, I'm coming home

  I walked the streets of San Francisco
  I've tried the rides in Disneyland
  Dated a million girls in Sydney
  Somehow I feel like I don't belong

  Hinahanap-hanap kita Manila ^note I'm always searching for you Manila
  Ang ingay mong kay sarap sa tenga ^note Your noises are music to my ears
  Mga jeepney mong nagliliparan ^note Your full-throttled jeepneys
  Mga babae mong nagagandahan ^note Your beautiful women

  Take me back in your arms Manila
  And promise me you'll never let go,
  Promise me you'll never let go
• AKB48's "47 no Suteki na Machi e" with each of the 47 idols singing out all the 47 prefectures of Japan in order. Justified that each member is from each of its respective prefecture.
  Hokkaido! Aomori! Iwate! Miyagi!
  Akita! Yamagata! Fukushima! Ibaraki!
  Tochigi! Gunma! Saitama! Chiba!
  Tokyo! Kanagawa! Niigata! Toyama!
  Ishikawa! Fukui! Yamanashi! Nagano!
  Gifu! Chiba! Aichi! Mie!
  Shiga! Kyoto! Osaka! Hyogo!
  Nara! Wakayama! Tottori! Shimane!
  Okayama! Hiroshima! Yamaguchi! Tokushima!
  Kagawa! Ehime! Kochi! Fukuoka!
  Saga! Nagasaki! Kumamoto! Oita!
  Miyazaki! Kagoshima! Okinawa!
• Lou Bega's "I Got A Girl" lists places where Lou has got a girl.
  I got a girl in Paris, I got a girl in Rome,
  I even got a girl in Vatican Dome
  I got a girl right here, I got a girl right there
  And I got a girlfriend everywhere
  I got a girl on the Moon, I got a girl on Mars
  I even got a girl that likes to dance in the stars
  I got a girl right here and one right there
  And I got a girlfriend everywhere
• Dion's "The Majestic" lists four cities and four states where the title dance is supposedly being performed.
• Jennifer Lopez's "On the Floor" lists five cities, two countries and a continent.
• Chubby Checker's "Twistin' USA" lists sixteen cities before getting a little more exotic.
  They're Twistin' in Washington
  In Cincinatti, England, Europe
  They're Twistin' in Asia, Africa and Australie (Australia)
• The Filipino novelty singer Yoyoy Villame recorded a song in 1977 called "Philippine Geography", which listed the provinces (and a few cities) of the Philippines.
• Ed Ames' "Son of a Travelin' Man" lists nineteen cities.

Pop Punk

• All Time Low's song "Hello Brooklyn" mentions...well. Brooklyn. And some other places.
  • Including a roll call of cities at the end of the song.

Progressive Rock

• Marillion's The Invisible Man:
  Cold as a ghost ..watching the streets, Sheltering in doorways of
  Venice, Vienna, Budapest, Krakow, and Amsterdam

R & B

• James Brown - "Living in America": Lists 9 major U.S. cities in a row, with echoing backup vocals for good measure.
  • "Night Train". It's pretty much an instrumental except for the city names.
• "Dancing in the Street" by Martha Reeves and the Vandellas lists eight cities.
• Lee Dorsey's "Ride Your Pony" mentions seven cities throughout the lyrics.

Rap

• A number of R&B or rap songs try to break the United States into three or four densely populated areas and give a shout out to each one, as in this quote from Nelly's "Dilemma":
  East coast, I know you're shakin' right
  Down south, I know you're bouncin' right
  West coast, I know you're walkin' right
  Midwest, I see you swingin' right
• Drake's song "Fancy" mentions Atlanta, New York, Los Angeles, and Toronto.
• Ice Cube's "Rep That West" has a bridge that shouts out all the states he considers to be "West Coast".
• Tupac Shakur's "California Love" is full of shoutouts to cities and neighborhoods in California.
  And you know L.A. up in this
  Pasadena, where you at?
  Yeah, Inglewood, Inglewood always up to no good
  Even Hollywood tryin' to get a piece, baby
  Sacramento, Sacramento where you at?

Rock

• The Beach Boys, "California Girls"
  Well east coast girls are hip
  And the southern girls with the way they talk
  The midwest farmers' daughters really make you feel alright
  And the northern girls with the way they kiss
  The west coast has the sunshine
  I dig a french bikini on Hawaii Island
  • "Surfin' USA" listed a bunch of surfing locations through the US, for which Brian Wilson asked for help from his then-girlfriend's brother Jimmy Bowles, who was an avid surfer. The final tally includes almost every surfing spot in California, Sunset Beach and Waimea Bay in Hawaii, and "Australia's Narrabeen", a beach in northern Sydney. (The band played at Narrabeen in November 1992, with "Surfin' USA" being the mandatory encore.)
    • "Surfin USA" was a lyrical rewrite of Chuck Berry's "Sweet Little Sixteen", which also did the listing cities thing.
    They're really rockin' in Boston
    In Pittsburgh, PA
    Deep in the heart of Texas
    And round the Frisco Bay
    All over St. Louis
    And down in New Orleans
    All the cats wanna dance with
    Sweet little sixteen
    • And "Sweet Little Sixteen" is Suspiciously Similar to "Route 90" by Clarence Garlow, released a few years earlier. Garlow lists various towns in Texas and Louisiana on the way to New Orleans.
  • The Beach Boys also had "Kokomo", which aside from the eponymous fictional place "off the Florida Keys" (they weren't singing about Kokomo, Indiana), mentions a variety of (mostly Caribbean) destinations:
  Aruba, Jamaica, ooh I wanna take ya to
  Bermuda, Bahama, come on pretty mama
  Key Largo, Montego, baby why don't we go
• Huey Lewis's "Heart of Rock and Roll" does this. New York City and Los Angeles get their own verses, then there's this:
  "D.C., San Antone and the Liberty Town
  Boston and Baton Rouge
  Tulsa, Austin, Oklahoma City,
  Seattle, San Francisco, too"
  • And the original outro to the above song also name-drops Cleveland and Detroit.
  • Two special versions of the song were released for Canadian radio: the East Coast version has him shout out "Toronto! Montreal!" at the end, and the West Coast version has him shout "Vancouver!".
  • The version played on one Central New York station during the song's run on the charts had "Syracuse! Albany!"
• The Beatles parodied the Beach Boys' "California Girls" in "Back in the USSR" (as well as referencing another song):
  Well, the Ukraine girls really knock me out,
  They leave the West behind;
  And Moscow girls make me sing and shout,
  That Georgia's always on my mi-mi-mi-mi-mi-mi-mi-mi-mi-mind!
• Billy Joel's "You're My Home":
  Home can be the Pennsylvania Turnpike
  Indiana early morning dew
  High up in the hills of California
  Home is just another word for you
• Tom Cochrane's "Life is a Highway" (not strictly cities):
  From Mozambique to those Memphis nights
  The Khyber Pass to Vancouver's lights
• "Truckin'" by The Grateful Dead.
• Todd Rundgren's "Hot Espresso (All Jacked Up)" centers around a jetsetting band in their neverending search for coffee.
  "In the morning it's a bus to Barcelona
  fly a little side trip over to Roma
  Then we all meet up in Cannes, Nice, and Monaco
  Venice, Munich, London, San Francisco
  Then we drive to Santa Fe, then Austin
  New Orleans, Atlanta, New York, Boston
  We all meet up in Cleveland, Ohio
  Columbus, Detroit, coffee stop Chicago
  Then it's L.A., Honolulu
  Sydney, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Bangkok, Kathmandu
  And at the end of it all, if god is willing
  We're sipping Turkish coffee in Greenwich Village...
• Bon Jovi's "Raise Your Hands", up to and including Sayreville, NJ - the band's hometown.
• The Byrds' "The Bells of Rhymney" lists several Welsh locations such as Merthyr and Cardiff.
• U2's "Stay (Faraway, So Close!)" name drops "Miami, New Orleans, London, Belfast, and Berlin" as places to which the protagonist can escape "with satellite television".
  • In live performances of "Stay", the list of cities is usually changed to reflect where the concert is being played. When a Zoo TV concert in Sydney, Australia was filmed for global broadcast on television, Bono altered the line to "Miami, New Orleans, Sydney, to the rest of the world".
  • Live performances of "Magnificent" during the 360° Tour generally began with Bono asking, "Where are we going?" He would then list several cities, before invariably ending the list with the current concert's location.
• "Runnin' Back to Saskatoon" by The Guess Who. Besides Saskatoon, the chorus mentions other towns in Saskatchewan (Moose Jaw, Moosomin), plus Alberta (Red Deer, Medicine Hat) and British Columbia (Terrace).
• "Fire Down Below" by Bob Seger:
  It happens out in Vegas, happens in Moline
  On the blue blood streets of Boston
  Up in Berkeley and out in Queens
  And it went on yesterday, it's going on tonight
  Somewhere there's somebody ain't treatin' somebody right
  • Also "Sunspot Baby", about tracking down an ex who conned him and stole his money and credit cards:
  I looked in Miami, I looked in Negril
  The closest I came was a month old bill
  I checked the Bahamas and they said she was gone
  Can't understand why she did me so wrong
  • "Face the Promise" also mentions a bunch of places in the US the singer needs to leave in order to "face the promise of the Promised Land", including Olean (NY), Framingham (MA), Arizona, "Alabam'", and North Dakota—in different verses of the song.
  So long Allegany, so long Olean
  I need to face the promise of the Promised Land
• "Rock'n Me" by Steve Miller:
  I went from Phoenix, Arizona all the way to Tacoma
  Philadelphia, Atlanta, L.A.
  Northern California where the girls are warm
  So I could be with my sweet baby, yeah
• They Might Be Giants did this on a macro level with the "Venue Songs" project, for which they wrote a song about every venue they went to on that tour. Some of them are specifically about the theatres where they played, some are about the entire cities, namechecking neighborhoods and local landmarks, and some of them have not much to do with either and are just silly They Might Be Giants songs.
• Electric Six's "Escape From Ohio" ends with the narrator briefly paying tribute to the states that border Ohio, the implication that they would be far preferable.
  Don't you want to come with me
  And make a break for Kentucky
  I still got something to put in ya
  But we'll have to go to West Virginia.
  And I've heard great things about Indiana, too.

Rock and Roll

• "I've Been Everywhere", in which the chorus is the a hitchhiker declaring that he's been everywhere, and the verses are just long assonant lists of placenames. There are many different versions. Some of the more notable:
  • The original version, by Geoff Mack. lists towns in Australia:
    I've been to Moree, Taree, Jerilderie, Bambaroo,
    Toowoomba, Gunnedah, Caringbah, Woolloomooloo,
    Dalveen, Tamborine, Engadine, Jindabyne,
    Lithgow, Casino, Brigalow and Narromine,
    Megalong, Wyong, Tuggerawong, Wangarella,
    Morella, Augathella, Brindabella, I'm the feller.
  • The better known version by Hank Snow, itself covered by multiple people including Johnny Cash, relocates it to the Americas:
    I've been to Reno, Chicago, Fargo, Minnesota,
    Buffalo, Toronto, Winslow, Sarasota,
    Wichita, Tulsa, Ottawa, Oklahoma,,
    Tampa, Panama, Mattawa, La Paloma.
    Bangor, Baltimore, Salvador, Amarillo,
    Tocapillo, Baranquilla, and Perdilla, I'm a killer.
  • There's also a UK and Ireland version by Lucky Starr:
    I've been to Bradford, Guildford, Oxford, Littlehampton,
    Bedford, Chingford, Hereford, Wolverhampton,
    Shrewsbury, Canterbury, Aylesbury, Liverpool,
    Scunthorpe, Sandthorpe, Mablethorpe, Hartlepool,
    Whitehall, Blackpool, Mildenhall, Davenport,
    Newport, Southport, Stockport, I'm a sport.
  • And a New Zealand verison by John Grenell:
    I've been to Kaparoa, Whangaroa, Akaroa, Motueka,
    Taramoa, Benmore, Pongaroa, Horoeka,
    Rimutaka, Te Karaka, Whangarei,
    Nuhaka, Waimahaka, Motuhura, Waikaka,
    Motonui, Hokonui, Papanui, Wainui,
    Matawai, Rongotai, Pikowai, I'm a guy,
  • And this makes it easy to parody. The Simpsons had a version with all the fictional cities from the show, and there's an Alaskan version, in which the singer runs out of places in Alaska, and has to mention Anchorage several times.
  • In The Muppets Take the Bowl. Rowlf sings a version with Californian towns. In The Muppets Take the 02, he sings one with London Underground stations.
• Ian Dury and the Blockheads' "Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick" lists various places across the world where people are moving to the music, "From Milan to Yucatán".
• Tommy Facenda recorded 28 different versions of his 1959 hit "High School U.S.A.", each one listing the names of local high schools in a different U.S. city.

Ska Punk

• In Sublime's "April 29, 1992", there are 26, although the context is far different from what you would normally find with this trope.

Soul

• The Trammps' "Love Epidemic" lists eight cities and Texas.

Tropical Music

• Gaita-turned-salsa band Guaco had two songs dedicated to the beauty of Caracas's girls. One mentions several cities of Venezuela that also had pretty girls, before the singer settles on Caracas, while the other lists some of the most notorious neighborhoods of the city as providers of the sexy.
• Inverted in Jimmy Buffett's "Volcano"; he lists a bunch of places (including cities), but they're places he doesn't want to land when the titular volcano blows its top.

Vocal Jazz

• "Route 66", first recorded by Nat King Cole and covered by countless others, lists many of the cities along the eponymous road.

Examples from other media:

Live-Action TV

• Dustin the Turkey's "32 Counties" gives a line to every one of Ireland's traditional counties, although not all have a notable landmark or quality so he was forced to add "Laois has a prison", "Westmeath has a bypass" and "Leitrim's a mistake"...

Radio

• When performing "I've Been Everywhere" as the Pick-Up Song on an episode of I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue recorded in Dorset, Dorset native John Finnemore used towns in Dorset.
• One episode of John Finnemore's Souvenir Programme opens with a pub quiz in which John's character has a mnemonic song for all the capital cities of Europe, which he insists he needs to sing in full to answer the question, but which naturally fades out very quickly to save him actually writing one. Or so it seems, until the Storyteller sketch is the song in full.

Theatre

• Cats has the song "Skimbleshanks the Railway Cat", and in the third verse Skimbleshanks lists the cities he travels to on the Night Mail

They were fast asleep at Crewe, and so they never knew

that I was walking up and down the station,

They were sleeping all the while I was busy at Carlisle

where I met the stationmaster with elation!

They might see me at Dumfries if I summoned the police

If there was anything they ought to know about

When they got to Gallowgate there they did not have to wait

For Skimbleshanks would help them to get out!

• "We Open In Venice" from Kiss Me, Kate lists the same Italian cities four times:
  We open in Venice,
  We next play Verona,
  Then on to Cremona.
  Lotsa (noun) in Cremona.
  Our next stop is Parma,
  That (adjective), (adjective) menace.
  Then Mantua,
  Then Padua,
  Then we open again, where? (repeat)
• In The Music Man, the residents of the fictional River City, Iowa list a bunch of town names from Real Life Iowa at the end of "Iowa Stubborn." While most of the towns listed are fairly prominent (for Iowa in 1912), Mason City was very minor at the time — but also Meredith Willson's hometown, and the inspiration for River City.
• In Follies, "Ah, Paree!" lists places around the world that don't have what Gay Paree has.

Web Video

• Jay attempts to sing one listing all the counties of England at the end of the relevant Map Men episode, but Mark puts an end to it by taking the ukulele Jay pulls out and smashing it against the table. Jay does get the full song in over the credits, though.

Western Animation

• Wakko Warner's 50 State Capitals Song from Animaniacs can be seen here.
  • Let's not forget Yakko's Nations of the World song. While that one's dated in more ways than one (thanks in part to the Eastern European independence movements from the mid-nineties), Rob Paulsen also does updated versions.
• In The Simpsons episode "Mobile Homer", a guy sings a version of "I've Been Everywhere" with all the fictional towns of the series.

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