It’s like walking into a Big Apple-themed playlist.
A new interactive museum exhibit lets visitors step into some of the most famous songs about the city – from “Tom’s Diner” in Manhattan to “Jenny from the Block” in the Bronx and “Rockaway Beach” in Queens.
The Museum of the City of New York’s “Songs of New York: 100 Years of Imagining the City Through Music” opens Friday, showcasing songs by artists ranging from Frank Sinatra, Simon & Garfunkel, Lil’ Kim and LCD Soundsystem.
“We did not need this exhibition to praise New York, or talk about how awesome New York is, but really talk about the way in which, if nothing else, New York inspires really strong feelings,” exhibit curator Lilly Tuttle told The Post.
“It has been a very important catalyst for artmaking for music, filmmaking, television, children’s books – [the exhibit] is really getting the sense of, ‘people are going to have strong feelings about this place,’” Tuttle added. “And that’s a good thing.”
The installation, which first debuted in 2023 during the museum’s centennial celebration, returned after “popular demand” and will be installed in its own dedicated gallery – providing ample space for museumgoers to interact with a map of New York through movement and learn more about the music hailing from each borough.
The exhibit even has its own accompanying Spotify playlist featuring all of the tracks included in the experience.
Tuttle said the original list was much more expansive and had to be “narrowed down” to a manageable 130 songs.
“We were trying to make sure we had borough diversity, time period – just hitting all the different markers that we wanted to hit, to give you this fly-through of time and space and style,” Tuttle recounted.
Some hidden gems on the playlist include Willie Colon’s “Nueva York” — representative of the city’s lively salsa movement in the Bronx and Harlem in the 1970s — as well as 21st century rapper LeiKeli47’s “Hoyt & Schermerhorn.”
The new iteration of the show also features accompanying photography from the museum’s own collection, highlighting musical eras from early punk to the birth of hip-hop.
Visitors can expect works from Allan Tannenbaum, Joe Conzo, Fred W. McDarrah and Jannette Beckman, with works portraying New York City icons from the Velvet Underground to Louis Armstrong to Hector LaVoe.
“I think what’s really fun about the experience is that you get these odd juxtapositions – the whole kind of user experience of “Songs of New York” is that it can be a little frenetic, like you step on a borough and someone else steps on a borough, and so the songs can kind of come fast and furious,” Tuttle said.
“I think it’s really fun to have those unexpected juxtapositions of like Frank Sinatra and like the Wu Tang Clan,” the curator added.
“That speaks very much to the whole theme of the exhibition, because it was organized thematically, you get this crazy quilt of styles and voices in there.
