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That Special Kind of Sadness: Songs About Los Angeles

We’re spending some (virtual) time in Los Angeles, this week, as the weather starts to get cold most everywhere else.
Michial Farmer
December 8, 2025

We’re spending some (virtual) time in Los Angeles, this week, as the weather starts to get cold most everywhere else. Send your song recommendations to me at symposiumofsongs@gmail.com!

  • 0:00

    Dawes, “Time Spent in Los Angeles” (Nothing Is Wrong, 2011)
  • 5:35

    The Mamas and the Papas, “California Dreamin’” (If You Can Believe Your Eyes and Ears, 1966)
  • 8:11

    Carpenters, “White Christmas” (Christmas Portrait, 1978)
  • 14:32

    Jay Farrar, Will Johnson, Anders Parker, and Jim James, “Old L.A.” (New Multitudes, 2012)
  • 17:32

    B.B. King, “Back in L.A.” (There Is Always One More Time, 1991)
  • 22:28

    R.E.M., “Electrolite” (New Adventures in Hi-Fi, 1996)
  • 27:25

    Reading: Robert Penn Warren, All the King’s Men
  • 33:39

    Mark Ronson featuring Kevin Parker, “Leaving Los Feliz” (Uptown Special, 2015)
  • 37:57

    Jerry Jeff Walker, “L.A. Freeway” (Jerry Jeff Walker, 1972)
  • 42:39

    Dwight Yoakam, “Guitars, Cadillacs” (Guitars, Cadillacs, Etc., Etc., 1986)
  • 46:19

    Reading: Raymond Chandler, The Little Sister
  • 54:37

    Haim, “Los Angeles” (Women in Music Pt. III, 2020)
  • 58:23

    Thee Midniters, “Whittier Blvd.” (Thee Midniters, 1965)

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A stack of three Local Culture journals and the book 'Localism in the Mass Age'

Michial Farmer

Michial Farmer is a poet, essayist, and history teacher. He is the author of Imagination and Idealism in John Updike’s Fiction (Camden House, 2017) and the translator of Gabriel Marcel’s Thirst (Cluny, 2021). He lives in Atlanta.

2 comments

  • vileness fats
    10 months ago

    Greetings from the Driftless Bioregion!
    How goes it, Michael?
    So I sent this to friends and family:

    I LOVE Front Porch Republic. It and its roster of interesting and invested contributors and I have been a good fit from its get-go. If I have an intellectual and spiritual home on-line, FPR is its address. And here’s one reason as to why.

    Along with doing what they always do, they are constantly finding ways to keep regulars like me engaged. And this is the latest: A Symposium of Popular Songs. And this particular entry features “That Special Kind of Sadness: Songs About Los Angeles

    All and all, I like what Farmer has included; but there’s one MAJOR flaw–a serious omission–and it just has to be included on even a short list of songs about L.A. And I’m willing to bet that its absence is a reflection of the writer’s musical biases, rather than being an outright dis. Otherwise, there’s no explaining his leaving off:
    //www.youtube.com/watch?v=8kAiQiz_XDs
    X-Los Angeles

    Thanks for keeping things interesting!

  • Madeleine
    10 months ago

    You need Phil Och’s ‘The World Began in Eden and Ended in Los Angeles’! Specifically, the live 1968 Vancouver concert recording. 🙂

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