C90:Songs that either mention or are about Houston, Texas.

Ted Taylor, Houston Town.

And the Charalambides have an album called Houston

Soul Coughing has a song called "Houston" on El Oso.

classic! I grew up outside Houston (Kingwood) and we'd listen to this all the time in preschool.

DJ Screw wrote a bunch of songs about Houston and its codeine-syrup scene, til the syrup itself killed him in 2000, at age 30.

And "Galveston" -- close enough.

Oh my god. I am from Houston and I was a rabid Oiler fan growing up (I was very depressed when they sold out to Tennessee). Now THAT SONG will be in my head all day! There is a big local rap scene in H-town so I would guess that it's mentioned all the time. Damn I miss that crowded, hot, horribly polluted place.

That reminds me, my sister once told me that some local band covered "Dirty Water" by the Standells back in the eighties and substituted "Houston" for "Boston". Very appropriate. Don't know the band or if it's still available though.

I grew up near Beaumont, which Lucinda Williams mentions in a song.

I'm from Mauriceville if any of you know where that's from. Living in Dallas now.

Mark Chestnutt - Going through the Big D and I Don't Mean Dallas.

I don't know the artist - "Have you ever seen Dallas from a DC-9 at night?"

"In Houston we just started a
new dance called the Tighten Up."

But it was no "Tighten Up," that's for sure.

The Flatlanders version is on "More a Legend Than A Band", and Joe Ely covered it on his "Musta Notta Gotta Lotta" LP in addition to a couple of his live sets.

Because I grew up in Pittsburgh, PA and went to college in Houston, I've long had an affinity for "Life During Wartime."

If you ever get a chance to go to the Continental Club in Houston on a Monday night, you might get to hear the El Orbits play this song and they do a bang-up job of it.

That is, if the El Orbits are still doing their regular Monday "Lounge Night" gig. Damn, I miss Houston.

Houston, Johnny Copeland ("Houston won't you let me come home")

Struggle Here in Houston, Juke Boy Bonner

White Freightliner Blues, Townes Van Zandt ("Bad news from Houston, half my friends are dying...")

Houston Town, Brady Harris

Last Concert Cafe, Horseshoe

Almost all of Rodney Crowell's The Houston Kid album

Devin the Dude has one song about getting stuck behind the train tracks on Mykawa while he's jonesing for weed, and another about meeting someone "at the sandwich shop on Bellfort and Scott."

Geto Boys "City Under Siege" references the police shooting of unarmed Ida Delaney

Mark May and Culturcide also each have songs called "Telephone Road"

Infernal Bridegroom Productions "Meat/Bar" s/t is an touching evocation of Houston's 1990s bar scene with lots of local references.

"Mo City Don" by Z-Ro

"Continental Trailways Blues," Steve Earle

"Don't Let the Sunshine Fool You," Guy Clark song rec. by TVZ ("Fannin Street in the afternoon, is good place to pick up a tune")

"They Don't Know," Paul Wall

"Milo," SImpleton funk-punk/rap about the "Lima-time" era Astros

"Mr Ditta's Grocery Store" Lightnin' Hopkins, backed by the 13th Floor Elevators rhythm section on an album with cover art by Guy Clark. (Freeform Patterns)

The "Slime in the Ice Machine" song on Channel 13

Money Waters gets hung up name-checking Houston in his incomparable "Payless Blues"

Harris County Jail, Jug O' Lightnin'

Pasa-get-down-dena, JOhn Evans

Highway 87, Hayes Carll (About Bolivar Peninsula)

H-Town Get-Down (at the Crosby Fairgrounds), Lil' Brian and the Zydeco Travelers

Bloody Mary Morning by Willie Nelson
Lone Star Blues by Delbert McClinton

Joe Ely - "Imagine Houston"

Gun Club - "Texas Serenade": "He had folks in Houston, but he moved out west"

Deer Tick, "Houston, TX"

I bet you could do a whole separate thread on this for songs that mention Houston in its context as the NASA space center:

Inspiral Carpets - Saturn 5
Robbie Williams - Rock DJ

How about a new one from Bob:
If You Ever Go To Houston

Damn Everything But the Circus - Jonatha Brooke
"Houston is a rotten dump.
I don't mind New Orleans
Or the holes in my fishnets
But I mind the rain
When the tent goes up"

Working in Corners - Nanci Griffith
Houston, she's just around the corner
But I think I'll stop off here in Lafayette
And have me another round

"Mr Ditta's Grocery Store" Lightnin' Hopkins, backed by the 13th Floor Elevators rhythm section on an album with cover art by Guy Clark. (Freeform Patterns)
― novamax (novamax), Saturday, February 4, 2006 4:21 PM (4 years ago) Bookmark

Hopkins also has "Houston Bound."

Mary Chapin Carpenter has a great song about Hurricane Katrina called "Houston."

^ As does R.E.M. (Well, maybe not a great song, but it's OK.)

"Houston" - The Hates
"Houston, Texas" - James Kirk
"Arthur Lee at Houston Airport" - Tactics (Australia)
"In Houston" - Tapes n' Tapes
"Houston El Mover" - Joe King Carrasco

fat pat's verse from lil troy - wanna be a balla

[Fat Pat]
Big ballin, smashin, makin my ends
Smokin big killa gettin high in the Benz
Big ballin, smashin, makin my ends
Smokin big killa gettin high in the Benz
In the wind smoke goes as I crawl down on Vogues
Twenty Lorenzo, smoke all up in my nose
Yo' eyes, get froze, as you see my low
Candy-red, two-do', let my top down slow
Hittin, my remote, sittin, in my shit
Presidential V-12 with that AMG kit
It don't quit, as I get high
from K.C. to H-Town, connectin SouthSide
Now we worldwide, watch me highside
Fat Pat blowin killa, can't be denied
187 thugs, oh yeah we got love
Blowin sticky green we flow through and above

Really Red:

NO ART IN HOUSTON
(original lyrics by Perry Webb courtesy of Culturcide)
I turn my radio on
Shitty klol
They don't like the music
Want the ears of the stupid

No culture Houston!
Only hollow shells!
No art in Houston
Except the kind that sells

I go to an art museum
It's more like a mausoleum
Three canvas's in a row
A million dollars worth of snow
The modern period's dead
Can't they get that through their heads?
This junk ain't art
I'd rather hear Van Gogh fart

I turn my TV on
I turn it right back off
It's such a waste of time
I'd rather be jacking off
They're all built on money
They're all built on cash
I want every TV in the city smashed

The symphony is fine
But it may be a dead art form
The ballet is beautiful
It's the audience I scorn
I didn't get invitations
From Miss Ima Hogg
Hit the street
Just a cut above a dog

https://preview.houstonchronicle.com/music/roy-head-singer-who-took-houston-sound-up-the-15584781?fbclid=IwAR0pYkGD41QpwSUMSsARvNrSWRDWWuhmPWCEHLc7zI6Fhr33OFQO8tft-z4

RIP Roy Head who probably had a song with "Houston" in the lyrics

Roy Head, the Houston singer who died Monday morning at the age of 79, lived life in such a way that separating myth and fact could be difficult.

His moment of pop superstardom — the 1965 hit “Treat Her Right” — is documented. A wild slice of Gulf Coast R&B delivered by a manic, handsome, gritty-voiced country boy, the song reached No. 2 that year, kept from the top spot by a Beatles single. The song became a golden oldie, circulating for more than a half century, even becoming a crucial part of Quentin Tarantino’s 2019 film “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.”

More difficult to verify is Head’s claim that he once was dragged away by bodyguards after biting Elvis Presley on the ankle. Though it’s easy to imagine that happening.

“I take what he says and divide by two,” his son, singer Sundance Head, once said of his larger-than life father. “Then maybe something’s right with it.”