We Love It!: 5 Songs About Los Angeles

This week's songs are from Guy Clark, Bonny Doon, Dawes, Mike Doughty, and R.E.M.

Mar 24, 2026

RIP Phil Campbell - Motörhead - “Born to Raise Hell”

Phil Campbell, longtime guitarist for Motörhead, passed away last week. We celebrated a bit of Motörhead just recently, including an iconic quote from Airheads, a film which I will hold up as a classic any chance I can. “Born to Raise Hell,” which includes Campbell on the guitar, plays over the opening titles.

RIP Wayne Perkins - the Rolling Stones - “Worried About You”

Alabama native Wayne Perkins is probably best known for the two bands he didn’t join: Lynyrd Skynyrd and the Rolling Stones. He turned down Ronnie Van Zandt for the former, and—at least according to Keith Richards—lost out to Ronnie Wood because Wood was a Brit. Perkins came out of the Muscle Shoals studio musician scene. He played would play in bands with Leon Russell, record with Bob Marley, Joni Mitchell, Levon Helm, and John Prine, among others. Here he is on 1981’s Tattoo You’s “Worried About You,” which was recorded in the 1974-75 sessions for Black and Blue, an album Richards described as being about “auditioning guitar players.” Also featured on the track is the great Billy Preston on the organ. It’s a sultry slow-burner, complete with some vamping Jagger falsetto. But Perkins’ solo shines.

We’re heading out to Los Angeles this week for some Spring Break sunshine. So I’ve been thinking about a lot of L.A. music and L.A. songs. It seems like once a decade there is a huge rebirth of a Los Angeles music scene. Like New York, the people who live there tend to write a lot about it. They are distinct places with their own gravitational pull. So coming in and out of orbit, as traveling musicians do, gives people a lot to think about.

There’s also a mythology to the place—past, present, and future. Tool (“Aenema”), Rancid (“Antennas”) and Warren Zevon (“Desperados Under the Eaves”) all reflect on the prediction that Los Angeles will break off from the continental United States and “fall into the ocean.” That’s not really the type of imagery I want to be living with on vacation. But scenic drives, traffic, sunny weather, and the effects of LA’s unique gravitational pull are all fair game.

Here are 5 songs on Los Angeles.

“This ain't no disco
It ain't no country club, either
This is L.A.”

- Sheryl Crow, “All I Wanna Do”

Guy Clark - “LA Freeway”

There’s this idea of a “songwriter’s songwriter,” or a “comedian’s comedian”—someone talented and original that lights a path for others, exercises true craft, but doesn’t get the audience attention, especially compared to their acolytes. Guy Clark is the epitome of a “songwriter’s songwriter.” He didn’t just write songs dozens of others turned into hits, he mentored them, got them opportunities, and hosted gatherings at his home that functioned as songwriting workshops. That home was in Nashville, in part due to the native Texan’s miserable experience in Los Angeles, which inspired his best known hit—first for Jerry Jeff Walker, before Clark was able to release his own version.

If I can just get off of this L.A. freeway
Without getting killed or caught
I'll be down the road in a cloud of smoke
To some land I ain't bought bought bought

It’s a funny idea—trying to make a clean getaway from a town you hate, only to be trapped in its notorious traffic. Despite the fraught situation and strong feelings, the song presents itself as defeated. Sometimes, you win by knowing when you’ve lost. For Clark, the inspiration struck while stuck in traffic. Knowing he was onto something, he used his wife’s eyeliner to write the lyrics down on a burger wrapper.

Darkly funny side story: some time after Clark wrote this song he was driving home a very drunk “Skinny” Dennis Sanchez, mentioned in this song. At one point, Dennis tried to jump out of the moving car. Clark’s wife was in between Dennis and the door and he nearly pushed her out of the vehicle. Dennis would soon after die on stage, at 28. Many of his friends were heartbroken, but Clark’s response was “I don’t care. I’m still mad at him!”

“And I can't see why you'd want to live here
Billboards reach past the tallest buildings
You can't swim in a town this shallow
As you will most assuredly drown tomorrow”

- Deathcab for Cutie, “Why You’d Want to Live Here”

Bonny Doon - “San Francisco”

A song called “San Francisco” that’s actually about Los Angeles. Detroit’s Bonny Doon hit my radar as the backing band for Waxahatchee’s Saint Cloud. Katie Crutchfield herself is on backing vocals of this sun-kissed charmer about splitting up with a partner and a city and heading back up north.

And you know I'd love to see you
Yeah, you know I love LA
It's just something's come between us
And I'm goin the other way

It’s got a loose hippy vibe to it that fits the boho L.A. dream reminiscent of Laurel Canyon. Having said that, it also sounds kind of like Dave Berman on MDMA. For me the song goes next level with a chord variation in the final verse, giving it a flourish of hope, while the lyrics get mystical.

And life is but a flower
And time is but a dream
Love is but a river
Passing through everything

“Los Angeles by noon will be hazy, lazy sun
And we'll go people-watching just because it's fun
And Los Angeles by evening will be cars and bars
And lights bright shining all around us
As we stargaze at the night”

- Warren Marley, “Los Angeles”

Dawes - “Time Spent in Los Angeles”

I’ve had the pleasure of seeing Dawes wake up and knock out unassuming audiences on two different occasions—once opening for Bob Dylan, and another time at a free summer concert Millennium Park. With each progressive song, audiences fell in love with their earnest Jackson Browne-inflected folk rock, so much so they would give standing ovations mid song as they closed out their set. It’s a beautiful thing to witness. Somewhere along the way, bandmembers came and went, and they lost a bit of their songwriting mojo.

Taylor Goldsmith and Griffin Goldsmith, now the only two members of Dawes, grew up in and around Los Angeles. Last year’s wildfires wiped out both of their homes, their childhood home, and their Altadena recording studio. They recently hosted a benefit concert to raise money for the rebuilding efforts in Altadena. And “Time Spent in Los Angeles,” the opening track of their breakout Nothing is Wrong, took on new meaning for the band.

These days my friends don’t seem to know me
Without my suitcase in my hand
Where I am standing still
I seem to disappear
But maybe that’s how I found you
Maybe that’s taught me exactly what I want
Maybe meeting you so far away from home
Is what makes it all so clear
But you got that special kind of sadness
You got that tragic set of charms
That only comes from time spent in Los Angeles
Makes me wanna wrap you in my arms

The Goldsmith’s re-recorded the song with Andrew Bird following the fires. But we’re going to stick with the version from Nothing is Wrong. The band’s second album was produced by Jonathan Wilson, a producer who—like Guy Clark—hosted jam sessions in his home with an array of folk-rockers that ultimately contributed to a revival of the Laurel Canyon sound captured on Dawes’ early records. Also featured on the album version is the great Benmont Tench of Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers.

“I was a television version of a person with a broken heart
And everybody was gone
You were standing in the street 'cause you were trying not to crack up
And Bona Drag was still on
Now I only think about Los Angeles when the sound kicks out”

- The National, “Pink Rabbits”

Mike Doughty - “No Peace, Los Angeles”

Mike Doughty is best known as the front man of Soul Coughing—a band (until recently) he had an extremely fraught relationship with. While in the band, he built up a collection of songs the band had rejected and recorded them in a single day in 1996, but never released it. When Soul Coughing broke up in 2000 and Doughty toured as a solo act, he was surprised to find that audiences already somehow knew the material. It had leaked somehow and people found it on Napster.

“No Peace, Los Angeles,” was among those tracks on what became Skittish. Similar to “Screenwriter’s Blues”—a song Soul Coughing did record—it captures stream-of-conscious, impressionistic moments of a Los Angeles denizen living just beyond the edges, running away from themself and into various vices. The writing on the wall is like the city they are in, they are emotionally and spiritually empty.

And the true dope on salvation is
Two weeks in a clinic and a public testimonial
You tell them kids, tell them not to hurt themselves
Speeding fast from who you are
No peace, Los Angeles

The trick of the song is that it’s paired with a serene string section and a reflective, sepia melody of someone looking back, as if that emptiness is something they miss.

“She was looking so right
In her diamonds and frills
Oh those big city nights
In those high rolling hills
Above all the lights”

- Bob Seger, Hollywood Nights

R.E.M. - “Electrolite”

I was 10 years old when Monster came out, and it was R.E.M.’s first release while I was aware of who they were. It was a sonic shift for the band, going for louder, simpler music—which was the style at the time. So it felt like a big record in more ways than one. But for some reason, they also mostly fell off my radar after that—popping up on the Man on the Moon soundtrack. It wasn’t until I was in college and a friend insisted New Adventures in Hi-Fi was their best album that I feel like I’d even heard of it, and then realized what I’d been missing. I’m still not sure how I did; it appeared towards the top of many “Best of the 90s” album lists. It’s weird how blind spots crop up sometimes.

When touring Monster, R.E.M. felt they were at their peak as a band. They took a cue from Radiohead’s approach to recording The Bends, and decided to lay down basic tracks during soundchecks. As a result, many of the songs feel looser and bigger, but also cut with a little bit of an edge to them. The tour and the record would be Bill Berry’s last with R.E.M., after he suffered a brain aneurysm on stage and retired. While making the record, Stipe thought to write a farewell song to the 20th century. And for him, Los Angeles was a great place to set it.

“Our impact [on Earth] is actually quite shallow. L.A. represents that very well as a relatively new place, as the last place to be colonized in America, but also as somewhere that represents hope.”

As he introduced the song when I saw them at the United Center in 2008, Stipe described his time in Los Angeles, and the amazing visual of driving Mulholland Drive at night, looking out over the light scape of the city as the songs major force. That majestic, floating feeling Stipe described is alive in the song, a gift from Mike Mills on piano. But the hope, that’s all Stipe.