How Growing Up in Suburbia Influences Music

What if I told you that being from “just outside New York City” holds unique experiences that can help form great songwriters?

New York City has stood as a muse for so many - a land of new beginnings, a beacon of hope, and a source of inspiration. New York is a place with such a strong culture, it has influenced literature, film, music, and other various art forms for hundreds of years.

The pure cultural potency that New York City omits defines lifestyles for approximately 4,600 square miles - the largest urbanized area in the United States. Its size spreads over the region as far north as Saugerties, New York, as far south as Long Beach Island, New Jersey, as far east as New Haven, Connecticut, and as far west as Pike County, Pennsylvania. 

Once rapid urbanization began in the mid-19th century, cities all across the nation began to grow during a new industrial age. Highways and railroad lines continued their expansive sprawl into the 20th century, sparking new economic opportunity and residential growth in surrounding towns. Throughout the 1920s, 1930s, and after World War II, with immigrants looking for work and soldiers returning home, looking to start families, houses and neighborhoods in the surrounding towns of the city were built in huge quantities, as the suburbs became the place to raise a family. 

Brendan Casey | Musician, Writer, History Buff. Pictured with girlfriend, musician Jessica Leone

With a generation that had grown up through the Great Depression and World War II, couples sought peace and prosperity in the suburbs. They wanted to settle down, have their white-picket fence - so symbolic of a middle-class suburban lifestyle - and their two to three children. By the end of the 1940s, almost every home had refrigerators and toasters, and other new household appliances. Families purchased cars, a symbol of wealth and sophistication, as well as freedom. Everyone wanted a slice of this “American Dream”.

By 1955, half of American households had a television, which only offered four channels - ABC, CBS, NBC, and DMN - creating shared experiences in every home. Not only could every family watch The Honeymooners or I Love Lucy, but the young generation got to be captivated by The Ed Sullivan Show, where Bill Haley & The Comets, Buddy Holly, hip-shaking Elvis Presley (who in his Ed Sullivan Show debut, 82.6% of TV’s in the United States were tuned in - still a national record) or The Beatles would illuminate their living rooms - moments that would change American history forever.

While the heyday of AM radio’s “Golden Age '' was coming to an end, the production of music and the growth of FM radio in the 60s grew simultaneously. U.S. Auto manufacturers began FM radio installs to their vehicles in 1963, while Americans were purchasing cars at a record rate. Now, being close to the city meant being connected to music and more radio stations than ever before.

With the birth and boom of rock & roll, motown, and so many other genres, came some of the coolest, most radical figures that suburban kids had ever seen in their lives. 

Over the years, music has evolved from records, to cassettes, to CDs, and then iPods, and now streaming services - but radio has outlasted them all.

With this new age of prosperity for the working-class family, also came a level of conformity - but with conformity in any era, comes counterculture, and with counterculture is the birth of a new stance on thought, art, literature, music, architecture, and so much more. Individualism, being unique, finding your own voice - all of this hits the suburbs with inspiration from the city.

So now you’ve got a vague history of American suburbia…how does all of this tie into the influence it has on songwriters?

For starters, the proximity to the city connects us to an immense amount of radio stations (roughly 128) and exposes us to sounds that you won’t hear in many other places in the country. Pop, rock, jazz, blues, hip-hop, alternative, indie rock, country, doo-wop, soul, motown, folk, ambient, experimental - you can find all this on the radio outside of New York if you search for it. It’s all there, ready to filter into your musical palate. Streaming services may make this easier, but radio has been doing it for decades - and you can’t control what song you hear next, pushing you out of your musical comfort zone. It plays in the grocery store, it plays at the dentist, it plays in your car. It’s an organic connection, and it’s always there, whether you realize it or not.

Look at Steely Dan, for example. Both Donald Fagen and Walter Becker grew up in the shadow of New York City. With Fagen being from born in Passaic, New Jersey but raised in South Brunswick, and Becker growing up in Scarsdale, the two hit it off with their love for the folk & rock sounds of Bob Dylan and jazz, soul, and funk music - not exactly a combination you think would be natural, but they were exposed to this music on FM radio growing up outside the city - and the marriage between the two became their sound as we know it today. Fagen’s 1982 debut solo album The Nightfly is actually quite autobiographical, inspired by his suburban upbringing outside of New York City.

And of course, how about Steam and their 1969 #1 hit “Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye”, influenced by blues shuffles and doo-wop music they were exposed to in their teen years? They were from Bridgeport! There’s no doubt that their radio growing up in the area had a heavy influence on their sound…enough to make one of the catchiest songs of the era.

Out here in the suburbs, we are also fortunate enough to have a level of wealth to appreciate music as a form of entertainment - and attending any live music event is a very musically inspiring thing indeed. Seeing art made before your eyes and put into thin air is a beautiful concept.

Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth said of growing up in Bethel that “Connecticut was a great place to be, because the bands would come to you.” And if you can’t dig anything in the suburbs, you can always head into the city for music.

In the past, southwestern Connecticut had the New Haven Coliseum, Kennedy Stadium at Bridgeport Central High School (Jimi Hendrix, Creedence Clearwater Revival, and BB King played there), Staples High School in Westport (The Animals, The Doors, and The Byrds all played there), Ron’s, The Tune-Inn and The Moon in New Haven, and Tuxedo Junction in Danbury…the list goes on - and today we have the fantastic Fairfield Theater Company, The Ridgefield Playhouse, and the new Westville Music Bowl and Hartford Healthcare Amphitheater. Growing up around a community passionate about music and the arts is a great source of inspiration for anyone, musician or not.

Along with appreciating music as an entertainment form, the area is also incredibly fortunate to have enough wealth to fund and maintain music programs in our schools. This allows students to receive an education in music that other parts of the country and even Connecticut are not fortunate enough to have. Even if you may not be in a town with a strong music program, there’s always a chance for private lessons from a teacher who was lucky enough to be taught in one. The beauty of learning how to play music is that it knows no bounds. You could learn from a neighbor, from a friend, a relative, and the internet. The resources are there for you. Walter Becker learned from his neighbor, Randy California - who later formed the band Spirit.

Another unique characteristic to growing up in the suburbs is the abundance of garages and basements - a prime practice space and refuge for any band looking to create sounds.

These settings are literally where the genre of garage rock was born in the 60s. Thousands of bands have been formed in garages or basements all across the country, but particularly in city suburbs. Bands that have lived and died, and bands that even made it out. Look at The Ramones - they were born out of a garage on Long Island, and turned into one of the most iconic bands of all time. 

Another benefit of being from this area that we don’t see so clearly is the influence that the landscape has on an artist’s sound.

Many artists filter in the urban sounds of New York’s massive influence, while also appreciating the rural, stripped down sounds with an Americana spirit. 

Take Bruce Springsteen, Billy Joel, and John Mayer.

Each from Freehold, New Jersey, Hicksville, Long Island, and our very own Fairfield, Connecticut. All suburbs of New York.

Each artist in their career has had the incredible knack of fusing together a combination of sleek modern pop and stripped-down earthy tones for their sound and in their lyricism.

Imagine the music of a place that has a large downtown center, strip malls, a city bus system and MetroNorth, but also has beaches, thick woods to hike in, or even farmland. For each of them, sometimes their sound went closer to the city, sometimes it left the skyline in the rearview mirror and headed towards the rolling hills of the countryside, and sometimes it was somewhere in between - in a local bar, in a school, driving down the main strip in their hometown, or in a factory - it’s all in the suburbs.

That’s their sound.

Just look at Bruce Springsteen’s album covers. He is that guy. He’ll always be that working-class white t-shirt blue jean Jersey boy from the suburbs with an affection for big sky America. Listen to Born To Run. Darkness on The Edge of Town. Nebraska. Born in the U.S.A. That sound is everything he was exposed to growing up outside of New York City.

Or how about “The Great Suburban Showdown” by Billy Joel? It’s a story of returning to a hometown, full of suburban imagery of dad’s mowing the lawn, TV’s in living rooms, and returning to the old neighborhood. Or “No Man’s Land”? - a song about “suburban lust”, as businessmen and developers tried to turn suburban towns into corporate hubs.

In the case of John Mayer, he fell much more to the side of nonconformity in the suburbs, as he kept mostly to himself, seeking alternative culture - and while keeping to himself, he would spend his free time practicing guitar. 

His 1998 song “No Such Thing” touched on frustrations with “real world” things like going to college and getting a good job out of school while trying to find your own path - but instrumentally speaking, though defined as a pop-star, Mayer has taken inspiration from so many sounds he heard growing up in Fairfield, listening to CDs in his bedroom.

Though he’s relatively quiet about his upbringing, there’s no doubt growing up in Fairfield and having the resources and experiences he had shaped him as a fantastic musician and songwriter. He even shouted out Fairfield upbringing this past summer on Instagram.

At the end of the day, where you come from is where you come from. It’s ingrained in your DNA, and the experiences that you have and resources around you can and will shape a songwriter and a musician. Growing up outside of New York City is unique in this sense.

In a way, a musician or songwriter always has a connection to their hometown, because it’s their first sense of place. It’s the first setting that they’ll know the ins and outs of, and any place they go for the rest of their life, they will never have that same connection—so living in these suburbs, musicians carry it with them forever. 

Listen to their music and you’ll hear it.