All posts tagged “music

Very superstitious… writing’s on the wall

13thfloor

Very superstitious, writing’s on the wall,
Very superstitious, ladder’s bout’ to fall,
Thirteen month old baby, broke the lookin’ glass,
Seven years of bad luck, the good things in your past!

When you believe in things that you don’t understand,
Then you suffer!
Superstition ain’t the way.

Stevie Wonder. “Superstition.” Talking Book. Motown Records, 1972.

This photo was taken in the elevator of the “gold building” in New Haven, CT, on Church Street—you know, the one with the gold-tinted glass cladding. Every city’s got one. This gold building has a mezzanine, so the 12th floor… is actually the 13th.

(Did you listen to the link? Here’s more Stevie Wonder on Sesame Street.)

Architecture pop songs

During the fall semester my graduate students engaged in an internal competition to design and build an outdoor pavilion using only recycled cardboard. One student, who owns a programmable remote camera, snapped pictures of the build at 30 second intervals. He then made a video by stringing the images together and setting them to music. I was hoping for “We Built this City [on rock and roll]” by Jefferson Starship (released by Grunt in 1985), but the students chose a different soundtrack.

I started to wonder, how many popular songs exist which feature architecture as a core lyrical element? I thought of “Our House” (Madness, The Rise and Fall, Stiff Records, 1982), and “Burning Down the House”  (Talking Heads, Speaking in Tongues, Warner Brothers, 1983), but was at a loss for notable others. “Welcome to the Jungle,” Guns n’ Roses’ song about Hollywood, doesn’t count, because it’s more sociological then architectural (Appetite for Destruction, Geffen Records, 1987).

I’d like to gather a playlist of architecture pop songs. Please post your ideas.