This is a list of songs written about the U.S. state of Ohio:
| Title | Artist/composer | Album | Date | Description |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| "Back Home" | The Beach Boys | 15 Big Ones/Made in California | 1976 | |
| "Beautiful Ohio" | Ballard MacDonald | 1918 | Made the official state song of Ohio in 1969. | |
| "Big Butter Jesus" | Heywood Banks | We Just Landed! | 2007 | Refers to the King of Kings statue near Monroe, Ohio, which was destroyed by a lightning strike on June 14, 2010. |
| "Bloodbuzz Ohio" | The National | High Violet | 2010 | |
| "Boy in Ohio" | Phil Ochs | Greatest Hits | 1970 | |
| "Burn On" | Randy Newman | Sail Away | 1971 | |
| "Carmen Ohio" | Fred Cornell | 1903 | The oldest school song still in use by Ohio State University. | |
| "Carry Me Ohio" | Sun Kil Moon | Ghosts of the Great Highway | 2003 | The song's narrative is partly based on frontman Mark Kozelek's boyhood in Ohio.[1] |
| "Cleveland Rocks" | Ian Hunter | You're Never Alone with a Schizophrenic | 1979 | A cover version was used as the theme song for The Drew Carey Show in the 1990s.[2] |
| "Cuyahoga" | R.E.M. | Life's Rich Pageant | 1986 | About the once-heavily polluted Cuyahoga River; the lyrics reference when it caught fire in 1969, which became a watershed incident in the environmental movement.[3] |
| "Dayton Ohio, 1903" | Randy Newman | Sail Away | 1971 | |
| "Dreamy Bruises" | Sylvan Esso | Sylvan Esso | 2014 | |
| "Escape from Ohio" | Electric Six | Kill | 2009 | |
| "Four Days" | Counting Crows | This Desert Life | 1999 | |
| "The Girl from Ohio" | Outlaws | Lady in Waiting | 1976 | |
| "Going to Cleveland" | The Mountain Goats | Transmissions to Horace | 1993 | |
| "In Ohio" | Joseph Arthur | Our Shadows Will Remain | 2004 | |
| "In Ohio on Some Steps" | Limbeck | Hi, Everything's Great. | 2003 | |
| "Lisbon, OH" | Bon Iver | Bon Iver, Bon Iver | 2011 | |
| "Look At Miss Ohio" | Gillian Welch | Soul Journey | 2003 | |
| "Look Out Cleveland" | The Band | The Band | 1970 | |
| "Mrs. Hippopotamus" | Relient K | Air For Free | ||
| "My City Was Gone" | The Pretenders | single | 1982 | The song is an autobiographical lament about the singer returning to her childhood home in Ohio and discovering that rampant development and pollution had destroyed the "pretty countryside" of her youth; the lyrics make specific references to places in and around Akron, Ohio, the hometown of lead singer and writer Chrissie Hynde. |
| "My Ohio Home" | Gus Kahn and Walter Donaldson | 1927 | ||
| "O-HI-O (O-My-O)" | Al Jolson | 1920 | ||
| "Ohio" | Leonard Bernstein, et al. | 1953 | From the Broadway musical Wonderful Town, about two sisters who move to New York City from Columbus, Ohio; in the song, they lament leaving. | |
| "Ohio" | Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young | single | 1970 | Written by Neil Young in reaction to the 1970 Kent State Shootings, after he saw the photos of the incident in Life Magazine.[4] Charted at #14 on Billboard Hot 100. |
| "Ohio" | Isabelle Adjani | Pull Marine | 1983 | Song in French by actress Isabelle Adjani, written by Serge Gainsbourg. |
| "Ohio" | Modest Mouse | This Is A Long Drive For Someone With Nothing To Think About | 1996 | |
| "Ohio" | Chixdiggit! | Born on the first of July | 1998 | |
| "Ohio" | Cherry Glazerr | Stuffed & Ready | 2019 | |
| "Ohio" | Damien Jurado | Rehearsals for Departure | 1999 | |
| "Ohio" | Over the Rhine | Ohio | 2003 | |
| "Ohio" | The Black Keys | Brothers (bonus track) | 2011 | |
| "Ohio" | Justice (band) | Audio, Video, Disco | 2011 | |
| "Ohio" | Kingswood | Microscopic Wars | 2013 | |
| "Ohio" | Caamp | Caamp | 2016 | |
| "Ohio" | Andrew McMahon in the Wilderness | 2018 | The single was not written for an album; it was released digitally in May 2018.[5] | |
| "Ohio (Come Back to Texas)" | Bowling for Soup | A Hangover You Don't Deserve | 2005 | |
| "Ohio Is for Lovers" | Hawthorne Heights | The Silence in Black and White | 2004 | |
| "Ohioisonfire" | Of Mice & Men | The Flood | 2011 | |
| "Road Outside Columbus" | O.A.R. | In Between Now and Then | 2003 | |
| "Somewhere In Ohio" | The Jayhawks | Smile | 2000 | |
| "Youngstown" | Bruce Springsteen | The Ghost of Tom Joad | 1995 | The song tells the tale of the rise and fall of Youngstown, Ohio, over several generations, from the discovery of iron ore nearby in 1803 through the decline of the steel industry in the area in the 1970s.[6] |
References
edit- ^ Jurek, Thom, Review: Ghosts of the Great Highway, Allmusic, retrieved August 6, 2011.
- ^ "Cleveland Rocks by Ian Hunter Songfacts". Songfacts. Retrieved March 4, 2012.
- ^ Greene, Jay (April 21, 2011), "Earth Day, R.E.M., Tea Party, Big Oil, the future of wind and solar power in Michigan, America", Crain's Detroit Business, retrieved August 6, 2011.
- ^ McDonough, Jimmy (2002). Shakey. New York: Anchor Books. p. 345. ISBN 0-679-75096-7.
- ^ "Andrew McMahon in the Wilderness shares surprise new track, Ohio". ABC Radio. May 11, 2018. Retrieved July 21, 2018.
- ^ Sawyers, J.S. (2006). Tougher Than the Rest. Omnibus Press. pp. 140–142. ISBN 978-0-8256-3470-3.