▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
4. Erykah Badu: “Window Seat”
Dallas’s own Erykah Badu shot the controversial music video for this slow jam, the first single from her 2010 album “New Amerykah Part Two (Return of the Ankh),” in Dealey Plaza.
▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
5. Donna Summer: “I Feel Love”
The city of Boston hosts an annual Donna Summer Disco Party in honor of Dorchester’s favorite dance music legend. This year’s celebration is on June 27 — and according to its website coincides with “the highly anticipated return of roller skating on City Plaza.” As Donna would have wanted!
▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
6. Post Malone featuring Quavo: “Congratulations”
Though born in Syracuse, N.Y., the rapper and aspiring country star Post Malone moved to a Dallas suburb when he was 9 and his father took a job managing concessions at Cowboys games. In 2018 and 2019, he hosted his own festival, Posty Fest, in his adopted hometown.
▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
7. Pixies: “Break My Body”
In the 1980s and ’90s in particular, Boston had a thriving underground scene full of groups destined to influence the future of indie rock. Perhaps the most notable band was Pixies, who employed Steve Albini (who died last month) to produce their raw and tuneful debut full-length, “Surfer Rosa,” including this song. May no player break his body during the N.B.A. Finals — sounds painful.
▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
8. Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble: “Texas Flood”
The Dallas-born guitar hero Stevie Ray Vaughan titled the 1983 debut album by his blues band Double Trouble “Texas Flood,” after a 1958 Larry Davis blues lament. Vaughan’s own deeply felt and unhurried interpretation of the song would remain a staple in his live performances until his untimely death in 1990.
▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
9. Dropkick Murphys: “I’m Shipping Up to Boston”
Few bands capture the spirit of Boston — for better and worse! — like the long-running Celtic punk group Dropkick Murphys. With lyrics drawn from a scrap of paper in Woody Guthrie’s archives, this 2006 track reached new levels of Boston-ness when Martin Scorsese used it in “The Departed.”
