Happy Almost-May to anyone who has stumbled back here. The home stretch of the Spring semester has put a whole bunch of entries/essays on hold, unfortunately, but there will be a song challenge for May that I’m sure many of you will appreciate (especially a surprising number of millennials).

A few weeks ago, students in my two sections of GEO 121 (Intro to Globalization) submitted their third paper, which asked them to do a geographic analysis of a song of their choosing. I know I have done this at least once here, but I wanted to keep up the tradition. Here are, in no particular order, the songs which students chose (an asterisk indicates that I assigned this one, per request) for this semester’s music geography paper.

• Soran Bucha (Japanese Traditional Song)
• Ella & Louis – “Autumn in New York“
• Gordon Lightfoot – “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald“
• 2Pac feat. Dr. Dre – “California Love“
• Lil Herb – “Gangway“
• Alabama – “Dixieland Delight“
• Marc Cohn – “Walking in Memphis“
• Men at Work – “Down Under“
• John Denver – “Take Me Home, Country Roads“
• The Beatles – “Back in the U.S.S.R.“
• U2 – “Sunday Bloody Sunday“
• Frank Sinatra – “New York, New York“
• Pavement – “Unfair“*
• Panic! at the Disco – “Vegas Lights“
• Jay-Z feat. Alicia Keys – “Empire State of Mind“
• Ed Sheeran – “Nancy Mulligan“
• The Rockets – “Born in Detroit“
• Warren Zevon – “Werewolves of London“
• Kid Rock – “All Summer Long“
• Toto – “Africa“
• James Brown – “Living in America“
• Lynyrd Skynyrd – “Sweet Home Alabama”
• The Hacky Turtles – “Take Me There“
• Dr. John – “Down in New Orleans“
• John Denver – “Rocky Mountain High“
• Red Hot Chili Peppers – “Californication”
• Jason Aldean – “Crazy Town“
• Bazzi – “3:15“
• Tee Grizzley – “Teetroit“
• The Beach Boys – “Don’t Go Near the Water“