For as long that music has been around it has referenced the world and the places and names that populate it, either thematically, sonically or lyrically. Think San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair) or L.A Woman or London Calling and how vividly they reflect the place that they reference. Well, this is precisely the inspiration behind the ‘World Song Map’, a detailed world map only with song names instead of place names.
Got a spare few hours up your sleeve? Get lost in this incredible map where every name is a reference to a classic song.
The map comes from Dorothy, the London studio recently responsible for this recent diagram exploring alternative music history from 1975-now.
Not all the song labels are as literal as the examples above. “We wanted to combine the real places (e.g. ‘Back In The USSR,’ ‘London Calling,’ ‘No Sleep Till Brooklyn,’ ‘Tour De France’) with descriptions (‘River Deep,’ ‘Mountain High,’ ‘I Am A Rock,’ ‘Summer Night City,’ ‘Teenage Wasteland,’)” says Phil Skegg, the designer at Dorothy who created the map.
The visual masterpiece also includes a few cheeky reference: an allusion to global warming, the waters near Earth’s northern ice cap are named after LCD Soundsystem’s Losing My Edge, and Joy Division’s Isolation is labeled over North Korea. In total, the map includes 1,200 song titles and around 200 musical references. Insanely cool.
Take some time and get absorbed.
The version above is a little hard to read, so check out this magnify-able version here via Wired.
