More Songs About Buildings and Architects (Playlist help)

Hello everyone. What are some good songs about builders, architects, buildings and architecture? I'm doing a playlist this sunday, and thought I'd ask if somebody had some suggestions. So far, it's mostly Talking Heads...

Manic Street Preachers - Faster

Bob the Builder - Can We Fix It?

Pink Floyd - The Wall

Simon & Garfunkel - So Long, Frank Lloyd Wright

Pixies - Alec Eiffel

Kool Moe Dee - I Go To Work

Mentions a variety of professions but

I go to work like an architect
I build a rhyme sometimes it climbs so erect
Skyscrapers look like atoms
Cars electrons rollin' in patterns

Lou Reed, "Stupid Man"

'Stupid man
Hitchhking out of a good life in Saskatchewan
And he's got big big plans
Gonna build a house on some land'

Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark - Architecture & Morality (instrumental, title track of the album with the same name)

Black Sabbath, "Spiral Architect"

Something by Einsturzende Neubauten.

David Bowie - Thru' These Architect's Eyes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zRCGB9-H3A

What's He Building In There - Tom Waits

The Decemberists - Here I Dreamt I Was an Architect

There's a Max Romeo song, something about "let me put it up, put it up"..

Don't have it to hand but I think "Council Houses" by Denim namechecks le Corbusier, Gropius and Mies van der Rohe

Joseph Arthur - Build Back Up (about New York after 9/11)

The Jam - "The Planners Dream Goes Wrong"

WE BUILT THIS CITY

A song about a building... Leonard Cohen - Tower of Song

Also, for an actual building: Chelsea Hotel #2, and all other songs that reference the place.

Blind Willie Johnson: "If I Had My Way I'd Tear the Building Down"
White Stripes: "Let's Build A Home"
Waco Brothers: "Building Our Own Prison"
Codallo's Top Hatters Orchestra: "I Want to Build a Bungalow"

Robyn Hitchcock - My Favorite Buildings

the Who, "Welcome"

("We need more room
Build an extension
A colourful palace
Spare no expense now")

"Hoover Factory" by Elvis Costello
"Towers of London" by XTC
"Goldfinger" by Shirley Bassey obv.

Orange Juice - Bridge

"Brunel's phoned my lawyer
He's threatening to sue"

Something by Iannis Xenakis

By the way, I suppose you're not looking for songs about ordinary, unnamed buildings? Or are you also fine with Madness singing about their house in the middle of the street; Pulp's My Lighthouse etc?

WHAT she gonna do with a chimney on ha

"I Need A Roof" by the Mighty Diamonds
"Winchester Cathedral" by The New Vaudeville Band or whoever
"Piano" by Jimmy Webb obv.

XTC - Red Brick Dream
The Alan Parsons Project - Gaudi (album) w/ La Sagrada Familia

Underworld - Mmm... Skyscraper I Love You

It's for the final night of the film festival I'm working at, so I'm choosing songs on whether or not I think they kinda, sorta, fit our theme (and including songs from the films, which means for instance Gilberto Gil and Bjork is on there) So, like, mention them all, I need a brainstorm.

Are the films also about buildings and architecture? What are you showing?

pavement, "the hexx" ("architecture students are like virgins...")

Yes, it's Copenhagen Architecture Festival, and we show everything from straight ahead documentaries like BIG Time about Bjarke Ingels Group (so therefore: Big Time Sensuality) and Having a Cigarette with Alvaro Siza to less obvious stuff like Rem Koolhaas own documentary Lagos Wide and Close (so I have a 'Rand and Nairas' on there due to the chorus 'We'll be popping bottles from Josi to Lagos) and the latest from Harvard SEL, El Mar La Mar, about the desert between US and Mexico. And some fiction stuff, O Fantasma, Solaris, 24 City, old Danish films. A bit of everything, really.

The program is here: http://cafx.dk/program/

Connectivity by Mahogany sounds like architecture

https://youtu.be/8t9cFJb2rz0

"Buildings To Photograph" by the New Lines is a favourite of mine.

Eddie Cochran - Twenty Flight Rock

Pavement - "Grave Architecture"

Anything by Bauhaus.

(Also anything by my band, Slum 0f Legs, named after a quote by Saarinen, and half of our songs have stuff to do with architecture somewhere in the lyrics.)

Einstürzende Neubauten - Krieg In Den Städten

Palais Schaumburg - Wir bauen eine neue Stadt

The Clash - Lost In The Supermarket

Grant Hart - 2541 & Run Run Run to the Centre Pompidou

John Foxx - Underpass

The Specials - Concrete Jungle
(or Bob Marley obv)

Neil Innes, "Concrete Jungle Boy"

Gong, "Master Builder"

Robert Wyatt - Catholic Architecture

The Nits - Adieu, Sweet Bahnhof - a travelogue song that mentions the Gare Du Nord, Centre Pompidou, Paris streets 'like fjords' and the Hotel d'Angleterre in St Germain

Something by Taj Mahal.

The Go-Betweens, "The House Jack Kerouac Built"

Pavement - Fin

Open call for prison architects / send me your blueprints ASAP

on a similar note, xp

Aretha Franklin - The House That Jack Built

The Cinematic Orchestra - To Build a Home

'Demolition', which closes Act 1 of The Kinks' Preservation Acts theatrical concept album, is all about knocking houses down in order to captialize on the properties, including building new things:

"Then we'll build a row
Of identical boxes
And sell them all off at treble the profits."

"Two up, two down,
It hasn't got a garden,
But it's got a lovely patio.
Stainless steel kitchen sink,
Gas fired central heating,
Whaaa - specifically designed for modern-day living,
Nothing's permanent and nothing lasts,
We've sold all the houses so put 'em up fast."

Milemarker - Ant Architect
Milemarker - Pornographic Architecture
Los Campesinos! - There Are Listed Buildings
The Aisler's Set - Falling Buildings
Lightning Bolt - 2 Towers
Sufjan Stevens - The Seer's Tower
Death Cab for Cutie - Army Corp of Architects

admittedly, some of these are more strictly architectural than others

Pulp - "Mile End"

Saint Etienne - "When I Was Seventeen"

Lubetkin, Corbusier, Van Der Rohe, Mendelsohn.
Modern. Modern. Brutalist architecture.
Future, future.
The future is clean and modern.

Malvina Reynolds - Little Boxes
Piano Magic - Dutch Housing
John Mellencamp - Pink Houses
XTC - Let's Make a Den
Martin Newell - We'll Build a House
Geraldine Fibbers - A Song About Walls

van der graaf generator's "house with no door" is a heartwrenching song about a total architectural failure

In Every Dream Home, a Heartache

Different kind of building:
Genesis - Driving The Last Spike
(It's about 19th century British railway construction workers.)

Chairmen Of The Board, "Working On A Building of Love" (this is a good one)

Totally useless for playlist purposes but "Waiting for the Moving Van" by David Ackles is relevant (lyric from the POV of someone having to leave his house due to redevelopment, IIRC).

Raiden ‎– Beton Armé
Label: Offkey ‎– OKCD002
Format: CD, Album
Country: UK
Released: 08 Jun 2011
Genre: Electronic
Style: Drum n Bass

Tracklist

1 Barbican 6:07
2 Trinity 5:19
3 Tricorn 6:21
4 Brutalist 6:01
5 Trellick 6:28
6 Genie Civil 6:27
7 Habitat 67 4:57
8 Genex 6:08
9 Triangle 5:46
10 Ryugyong 5:24
11 Balfron 6:08

XTC (kinda custom built for this subject) - Ball & Chain

XTC, "Bungalow"

Nits - The Bauhaus Chair
Nits - Office At Night
Nits - The Eiffel Tower

gorillaz - rock the house.

Geraldine Fibbers - A Song About Walls

Stupid me, I forgot that the very next track on the album is "House Is Falling"

Architettura - A series exploring the synergy between the man-made worlds of architecture and electronic music.

Volume 1 - Savvas Ysatis And Taylor Deupree - Tower Of Winds (1998)
Volume 2 - Tetsu Inoue - Waterloo Terminal (1998)
Volume 3 - David Toop - Museum Of Fruit (1999)
Volume 4 - Panacea - Brasília (2000)

REM - Life and How to Live it IIRC

Sybarite - "Renzo Piano"

Papas Fritas - "Vertical Lives" is all about architecture ("only geodesic domes can save us now")

Papas Fritas - "Vertical Lives" is all about architecture ("only geodesic domes can save us now")

That explains the picture of the Seagrams Building on the inside of the booklet.

Wax - Building A Bridge To Your Heart

Kraftwerk - Metropolis