Across America

Here it is — your map of America . . . in music. Simon & Garfunkel clock up the miles and the geographical name-checks (Saginaw, Michigan, New Jersey turnpike etc.) when they chart a progression — from hope to sadness — though multiple states of mind, as a relationship breaks down on the open road: "America". Chuck Berry revels in the freedom and range of "Route 66", while James Taylor and Ray Charles place Carolina and Georgia, respectively, in the realms of the imagination. And Scott McKenzie has only one place on his mind, and only one method of cranial adornment: check out "San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair)".

Visit L.A. and Vegas, in Next Steps.

One vast land, thousands of ways to live it . . . the utopian image of Los Angeles comes under scrutiny here, as Madonna exposes cracks in Tinseltown's veneer on "Hollywood", while Wilbert Harrison eulogises street-corner wine-drinkers in "Kansas City", and Johnny Cash teams up with his missus for a detour to "Jackson". The first-person narrator of Bruce Springsteen's "Nebraska" has murder in mind — the track was inspired by the movie Badlands, a loosely accurate version of the infamous Charles Starkweather killing spree — and Ry Cooder summons a world of emotional desolation with the tumbleweed guitar strings of "Paris, Texas". You'll find murder, panic and more, in Deep Cuts.

Anywhere, U.S.A., is all things to all men — just depends who you are. Bowie's "Panic in Detroit" takes its cues from Iggy Pop's memories of his Michigan youth, while Randy Newman offers a vision of "Baltimore" that might not sit to well with the Convention and Visitors Bureau, with Glenn Frey and J.D. Souther on backing vocals. Loudon Wainright III describes the consequences of rain in Los Angeles, when freeways clog and "your whole house smells like your wet dog", and Nancy Sinatra transports us over the other side of the hill from Hollywood, to that vast hot stretch of smog-kissed suburbia, the "San Fernando Valley".

No other country owns the geography of pop and rock quite like the U.S.A. — it exists physically and figuratively, a place in our shared imagination created by countless stories set to song. Even if we've never been there, we can still get a vivid sense of what it's like to be there, through these tunes. Bruce Springsteen, rock-chronicler supreme of the American experience, guides us from the streets of Philadelphia to Nebraska; Frank Sinatra tells us why Chicago is his kind of town, also sweet home to Freddie King; Led Zeppelin follows the setting sun on a big jet plane, on "Going to California"; Elvis sings the praises of neon and one-armed bandits on "Viva Las Vegas"; and Arlo Guthrie makes a great case for visiting the "City of New Orleans".