Places worth singing about

The rules for making the list

     In addition to whether or not a location gets mentioned, there is the question of the zoom level of the mention: country? state? county? town? The rule here is that the decision will be made based solely on the context of the place in the song with no parallel listings of the more general locations. In other words, there won't be separate listings of say the country and state for a particular song just because a county was listed.

     Okay, so what does this all mean? A few examples should make everything clear:

•      "Child of a Fallen Soldier" specifically mentions Tuba City in the line:

  He asked, "When's Mama comin' home; does anybody know?"
  Til her spirit drifted down on that Tuba City snow.

  Explicitly naming the place in the lyrics qualifies Tuba City, AZ to appear with this song in the list.

•      "Broke Stuff" describes the capture of Patrick Miller early in the war with Iraq. The song doesn't mention Iraq by name, but Americans are quite familiar with the story of Miller from American newspaper stories and Iraqi television. They know the events described occurred in Iraq--not, for example, in Afghanistan; so, Iraq also qualifies for appearing with this song in the list.
•      "Old 124" starts out by mentioning the Legion hall and declares at the end of each chorus that you can "...find us...at the old 124. While the average American might be confused by these hints, it's quite enough information to get you pointed in the direction of American Legion Post #124 from anybody in Ferdinand, Indiana. Ferdinand, IN would therefore be associated with this song in the list. Of course, in this particular case, Ferdinand is also mentioned explicitly; so, it would already have made the list for that reason alone.
•      "Somebody Over There" is a song about missing a family member who has gone off to fight a war. When the song was written would tend to place the conflict in Iraq or Afghanistan, but the feelings expressed would apply equally well to missing a doughboy during World War I or even someone gone off to fight some future war fifty or a hundred years from now. The song falls into that universal or creatively ambiguous category and is not listed here with any particular geographical location.

     Again, the important thing isn't so much understanding each rule and how to apply it but rather that the list you see here was compiled using a set of rules and that those rules were applied consistently.
 

The list