A former bouncer with hands like 5-pound hams was peppering Bam Margera with rib punches in a small gym at his Chester County castle.
Every few minutes, Margera waved his hands in surrender. He started looking for a place to sit down. Sweat poured down his face, and he struggled to catch his breath
“I need a second,” he said.
Margera had strung together years of bad days recently, but, despite the pain, this wasn’t one of them. Today, he’s sober, in love, skateboarding, spending some time with his family and son, Phoenix Wolf, and, on this early June afternoon, working out, too.
Fans of the Jackass series will get to see him on Friday, June 26, when Jackass: Best and Last, the fifth and final film in the series, is released.
“I think this is the grand finale of it all,” he said.
While Margera didn’t film new stunts or pranks for the latest film and had no interest in attending any premieres (his parents attended) or promotional events, he signed a deal allowing unseen archival footage and outtakes from early Jackass days to be used in the film.
Margera had a public falling out with the Jackass crew over sobriety demands they placed on him before the release of 2022’s Jackass Forever. (He still blames Johnny Knoxville’s “sharp tacks” stunt in a Viva La Bam episode for damaging his feet and hurting his skateboarding career.)
“I’m not ready to reunite with anybody,” he said recently.
Paramount Pictures alleged Margera broke a “wellness agreement” that required him to undergo regular drug and alcohol tests and take prescribed medication to be in the 2022 film. When the film was released, Margera had a brief cameo, and The Inquirer noted that it suffered without Margera’s trademark heartagram symbol and Philly hoagiemouth accent.
Some stars of the show and films, including Stephen “Steve-O” Glover and Brandon Novak, a longtime friend of Margera’s, have gotten sober. While Margera was seemingly blowing up friendships at his worst, Novak, a former pro skater, said he never took it personally.
“I always have and will still love him, wherever he is in his journey,” he told The Inquirerin June.
West Chester native Bam Margera poses for a portrait at his home in Pocopson Township, Chester County on June 4, 2026. After years of personal struggles, Margera says he is sober, skating again, and reconnecting with the “Jackass” franchise, allowing producers to use archival footage of him in the latest film.
Three years ago, Margera seemed hell-bent on burning his own bridges to a better life. He was in California, a long way from his home and family in Chester County. He was even further from good publicity, from his passion — skateboarding — or any semblance of a normal life. In his own words, he became a professional “piece of s—.”
Margera was mired in a custody battle with his ex-wife, Nikki Boyd, along with a slew of other legal issues and lawsuits in Pennsylvania and beyond, plus the subsequent attorney fees. He was in and out of rehabilitation centers for drugs and alcohol, and dealing with medical and mental health issues.
When The Inquirer spoke to Steve-O about Margera in 2023, he said he was ready to help.
“I just can’t do it for him,” Steve-O said at the time. “I tried everything I could to encourage him to want to get better, and none of it worked, so here we are. He has to want to get better.”
“Jackass” star Steve “Steve-O” Glover has been sober for several years but he says his stunts are better than ever.
Margera was placed on a 5150 psychiatric hold when he was found acting erratically outside Trejo’s Tacos in Los Angeles in June of 2023.When he was released, he checked into the Sunset Marquis hotel with more drugs than he’d ever had. Looking back, Margera said he wasn’t suicidal, but he didn’t really expect to wake up.
Still, he said a little prayer that night.
If he survived, Margera expected God to deliver him the “hottest eye candy with a tan pit bull” to save him. When he woke up, surprised to be alive, Margera went out by the pool, ordered a Bloody Mary, and met Daani Marie, a model and stretch coach he later married.
Margera and Daani Marie, who now spend most of their time in Florida, hit it off immediately.
“I really like you,” she said. “Do you want to walk my dog with me?
“What kind of dog do you have?” Bam asked.
“A tan pit bull.”
He looked up at the sun and smiled.
Former Jackass star Bam Margera walks to the Chester County Justice Center on July 27, 2023, for a preliminary hearing.
While he didn’t get sober immediately, Margera credits that night, that chance meeting with Daani Marie the next morning, for at least putting him on the path. The two were married in New Mexico a year later.
“Enough was enough,” Margera said. “I knew if I continued this lifestyle, I’m gonna die this way.”
Margera said he hadn’t been back to Castle Bam in 10 months, and on this June afternoon, was paying Andrew Mehan, a former bouncer in West Chester, for boxing lessons.
Mehan had to kick Margera out of some West Chester bars back in the day. He’d seen Margera in worse shape.
“Come on, get up,” he commanded.
Bam Margera in his personal skateboard park in Chester County, Pennsylvania, in 2011. (Charles Fox/The Philadelphia Inquirer/TNS)
Suddenly, Margera would rise from his rest with a groan — he still smokes — and snap a few jabs at Mehan.
His father, Phil, the lovable victim of countless pranks and a few punches from Bam over the years, sat in the wings, beaming with pride as his son countered with a few jabs.
“Yeah, he put me through it, but I’ll sit through anything as long as he’s sober,” Phil said.
Margera’s solo show, Viva La Bam!, was set almost entirely in and around Castle Bam, his notorious home and compound in Pocopson Township, Chester County, and also at his parents’ home. The show ran for five seasons on MTV, from October 2003 to August 2005.
Many of Castle Bam’s mainstays were still there: purple luxury cars — a Bentley and Audi in the driveway — skateboard decks on the walls, and lots of Margera’s paintings leaning against the walls. Margera described his style as “Jackson Pollock-ish.”
Brandon “Bam” Margera (right) of MTV’s “Jackass” was born in West Chester, and friend and costar Ryan Dunn moved there as a teen. Above, they were signing autographs after a screening of the movie “Jackass 3D” at Manayunk’s UA Main Street 6 in October 2010.
One skateboard deck featured Ryan Dunn, another steady fixture at Castle Bam back in the day. Dunn, Margera’s longtime friend and a fellow Jackass star, died in a fiery crash after a night of drinking in Chester County in 2011. The two met at 15, at West Chester East High School, and were nearly inseparable thereafter. In the wake of Dunn’s death, Margera turned to food and alcohol — pints of vodka and Gatorade, food binges followed by purges — to deal with the grief.
Margera was interviewed by a television station at the scene. He was mostly sobbing, and when asked how he would get through it, he said he “couldn’t.”
On this June afternoon, there were people, young and old, everywhere at the Castle: in the pool, putting skateboards together, or doing yard work. His wife doesn’t love the cold, so he didn’t plan on spending too much time back at the Castle or any one place, for very long. Pocopson Township, he said, cracked down on his ability to host big gatherings and do outlandish stunts.
“I love Pennsylvania, but I love to travel, too,” he said. “Boredom is my trigger.”
Friends popped in and out, including Dennis Wood, a West Chester native who used to skate at Margera’s as a teen.
“Obviously, there’s been trials and tribulations throughout the years; he took some steps forward, some steps back,” Wood said. “In the last couple of years, this is the best I’ve seen him.”
Margera had very public fallouts with his family during the worst years, too. He was charged with assaulting his brother at Castle Bam in 2023.
Margera’s mother, April, said his legal issues have been resolved and that he seems to be “out of the darkness.” She went to California with him and Phil recently to visit Phoenix Wolf.
“I would like to say I’m really proud of him. He came a long way. We’ve all been through the fire and brimstone, and we seem to be coming out on the other side,” April said in a text message.
Novak, a former star of Jackass and Viva La Bam! who now owns sober living houses in Delaware and New Jersey, said Margera’s family was always the grounding force, a source of unconditional love, and he was happy to hear the Margeras have made amends.
He also loves that Margera is skating again.
“Where he seems to be now is a healing stage,” Novak said recently. “To what degree, I can’t speak on, but it’s better than it was when he wasn’t speaking to his family or the majority of his friends.”
Margera started skateboarding as a teen, with Phil driving him all over the area to pursue his passion, including the late Love Park and FDR Park. Margera’s earliest stunts appeared in videos for his brother’s alt-metal band, CKY, and he got noticed by MTV. His crew was teamed up with other wild men, like Johnny Knoxville and Steve-O. Jackass was born. Margera and Dunn were featured in the first episode on Oct. 1, 2000, riding — crashing, rather — shopping carts.
Phil watched his son’s recent torturous boxing lesson with pride.
“He’s still cute, even at 46,” Phil said.
When the final sparring round was over, Mehan helped pull Margera’s gloves off. Margera slumped down and took deep breaths. A few minutes later, he shuffled out of the gym and walked straight into the deep end of the pool, fully clothed.
“I need to quit smoking,” he said along the way.
Mehan put the day’s boxing lesson into a deeper perspective while he unwrapped his own hands.
“That’s the worst he’ll ever look,” Mehan said of the boxing lesson. “Here’s the deal: He fought through it. He kept saying he was done, that he wanted to quit, but he kept going.”
West Chester native Bam Margera is filmed by a documentary crew as he rests during a boxing workout at his home in Pocopson Township, Chester County.
Planning a beach trip? I’m sure you considered the cost of fuel and snacks already, but be sure you’re aware of required beach badges, too. These are prepaid entrance fees for visitors.
Most beaches charge weekday and weekend rates, or offer seasonal tags, but a few of them are free. For instance, no beach tags are required at Atlantic City, Corsons Inlet State Park, North Wildwood, Sandy Hook, Strathmere, Wildwood, and Wildwood Crest.
🌊 P.S. Be sure to check out my colleague Amy Rosenberg’s Down the Shore newsletter. From town happenings to debates about playing loud music on the sand, she’s got it all covered. Sign up here.
Last time, I asked you to tell me where you go for a moment of calm. Bonnie Zetick wrote in with her pick, the Winterthur Museum, Garden & Library:
Winterthur! Calm, something different blooming every time you go, trails or tram to get around.
When I was working, if I had half a day off, let alone a whole day, I would head to Winterthur on Route 52 near Wilmington, Del. Winterthur now has a self-guided museum of the American Decorative Arts, permanent as well as temporary exhibits so always something to see that I’ve never seen before. Then you have the gardens! Lovingly developed and planned by Henry Francis du Pont, you will see spectacular colors, birds you may never have seen before, seasonal displays of azaleas (think Mother’s Day), mums, the house of 175 rooms (not all accessible to the public) dressed up for Yuletide, trees, some of which are very old — all lovingly cared for by knowledgeable, courteous, and committed staff. Winterthur also plays a leadership role in conservation, the latest techniques for care of these gardens, and research in their stewardship of this beautiful place. I love Winterthur!
Breathe in … and breathe out. I filmed this by the Schuylkill River along Kelly Drive.
👋🏽 This newsletter is taking a break in observance of the Fourth of July. Rest assured, we will be back July 10. Until then, have fun and be safe out there.
By submitting your written, visual, and/or audio contributions, you agree to The Inquirer’s Terms of Use, including the grant of rights in Section 10.
What is Philadelphia music? If you've been following along all week, you've finally reached our answer: the top 10 songs on our list.
It’s the Sound of Philadelphia: Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff, as well as Thom Bell, their fellow songwriter-producer who completed the triumvirate known as the Mighty Three.
It’s hometown heroes like Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes and the Stylistics; out of towners pulled into the city’s orbit such as the O’Jays, Spinners, and David Bowie; and the musicians at Joe Tarsia’s Sigma Sound Studios who made the city a music mecca in the 1970s.
But of course, Philly music is much more than the rugged, sophisticated “soul music in a tuxedo” sound. It’s the street-forged rap of Schoolly D, Freeway, and Meek Mill; the luxurious strings of the Philadelphia Orchestra; and the 21st century indie rock of Kurt Vile, Dr. Dog, and Japanese Breakfast.
Philadelphia is a foundational jazz city, from South Philly’s Eddie Lang — the “Father of Jazz Guitar” — in the 1920s to John Coltrane writing Giant Steps in Strawberry Mansion in the 1950s to pianist McCoy Tyner, who’s represented with a “West Philly Tone Poem.”
Philly music means Chubby Checker and the teen idols of American Bandstand, rock singers who grew up on soul music like Hall and Oates and Todd Rundgren, soul singers par excellence like Teddy Pendergrass, Patti LaBelle, Jazmine Sullivan, Jill Scott, and irrepressible pop stars like Pink.
It’s a musician’s city that birthed the world’s greatest hip-hop band — the Roots — whose best known and loved member is the drummer. A gospel singer’s city that’s home to powerhouse vocalist Clara Ward with a concert hall named after a classical contralto — Marian Anderson — who also sang spirituals and broke racial barriers.
Timed to the celebration of the nation’s 250th birthday in the city where it was founded, what follows is an annotated list of the 76 most essential Philadelphia songs.
Are they also the best? For the most part, in my subjective opinion, yes. But along with quality, many of these songs — that are not always made by Philadelphians — are included mainly because they say something about Philadelphia, and who we are as Philadelphians.
And some are on the list due to ubiquity. They’ve become part of the fabric of daily life. You might hear them on your TV, on Broad Street on New Year’s Day, at any time of year at the sports complex, or in the summertime as an ice cream truck rounds the corner.
I made most of the decisions myself, but my colleague Peter Dobrin contributed when it came to all matters concerning classical music, and some of his choices are better described as pieces of music rather than songs, per se.
He knows far more about classical music than I do, so — like Rocky and Adrian in Rocky — we will fill each other’s gaps. So be on the lookout for Peter’s picks, and also for where the “Theme From Rocky” is going to land on the top 76.
You may think you've never heard Cliff Nobles’ “The Horse.” But if you’ve ever been to a high school football or basketball game, the pep band has probably played it.Courtesy of the artist
Cliff Nobles’ voice is not heard on his biggest song. After moving to Philadelphia, the Mobile, Ala., born singer recorded the single “Love Is All Right” for Phil-La of Soul Records in 1968. In a session at Virtue Recording on North Broad Street that Nobles didn’t attend, guitarists Bobby Eli and Norman Harris, sax player Mike Terry, bassist Ronnie Baker, and drummer Earl Young — all future members of Philadelphia International Records house band MFSB — jammed on an instrumental version of “Love Is All Right” that became the B-side. DJs preferred that version without words, and “The Horse” became a No. 2 pop hit. You might not think you know it, but if you’ve ever been to a high school football or basketball game, the pep band has probably played it.
75
Bahamadia, “Uknowhowwedu”
Antonia D. Reed, aka Bahamadia, was born in Philadelphia and started rapping when she was still in high school.Courtesy of Michael Branscom
Stone-cold classic from the underappreciated — though not by hip-hop heads — rapper Bahamadia, from her 1996 debut album Kollage. The artist born Antonia Reed made her debut with a guest verse on the Roots’ “Proceed III” in 1994. Here, she samples A Tribe Called Quest and Schoolly D and displays her verbal dexterity on a song that’s a flashback to a memorable Philly hip-hop era, as she name checks 215 rappers and DJs of the day, including the Roots, Ram Squad, Cash Money, Kolby Kolb, Cosmic Kev, and “Illadell” itself.
74
John Philip Sousa, “Liberty Bell March”
We let Monty Python’s Flying Circus borrow it for a while, but the piece is ours. Originally written for an operetta left unfinished, the piece wraps our resident bell in Sousa’s usual uplifting military garb. Tubular bells — and an optional ship’s bell — are used to suggest the famous one near Independence Hall that no longer rings. — Peter Dobrin
73
Mannequin Pussy, “Drunk II”
(Left to right) Colins “Bear” Regisford, Maxine Steen, Marisa Dabice, and Kaleen Reading, bandmates in Philly punk (and pop) band Mannequin Pussy, at Penn Treaty Park in Philadelphia on Feb. 15, 2024.Jessica Griffin / Staff Photographer
Mannequin Pussy identifies as a punk band, and for good reason. The group can whip up a righteous racket and singer Marisa Dabice’s lyrics seethe with capitalist critiques and feminist rage. But it’s also a pop band whose earworms are as musically pleasing as they are lyrically subversive. This 2019 song alternates between outer- and inner-directed anger, from a great Philly band representative of this time and place. So much so that when Mare of Easttown creator Brad Ingelsby created a fictional Delco rock band, he had them sing Mannequin Pussy songs.
72
Bill Doggett, “Honky Tonk, Parts 1 and 2”
Huge 1956 instrumental pop and R&B smash from Doggett, who was born in Philly in 1916 and played piano in Lucky Millinder’s Orchestra in the 1940s, when he cowrote “Shout, Sister, Shout!” for Sister Rosetta Tharpe, who will appear higher up on the Philly 76. Doggett was an innovator of the Hammond B-3 organ, and “Honky Tonk” was such a runaway hit that it was covered by Buddy Holly and the Beach Boys. It also pointed ahead to the great Philadelphia organ jazz tradition that includes Jimmy Smith, Jimmy McGriff, Trudy Pitts, Shirley Scott, and Papa John & Joey DeFrancesco.
71
Lee Andrews & the Hearts, “Long Lonely Nights”
Lee Andrews Thompson’s impact goes well beyond cocreating his son, Roots drummer Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson. (And his lineage goes back further: Lee Andrews’ father Beechie Thompson sang with Philly gospel greats the Dixie Hummingbirds.) In the late 1950s, when the Hearts were managed by influential Philly DJ Douglas “Jocko” Henderson, the band scored a series of heart-rending doo-wop hits. “Long Lonely Nights” is the one that hurts the most.
70
Evelyn “Champagne” King, “Shame”
The Phillie Phanatic dances with singer Evelyn "Champagne" King after she threw out the first pitch on June 21, 2013.Charles Fox / Staff Photographer
Evelyn King was discovered as a teenager singing in a bathroom at the Philadelphia International Records offices. “Champagne” was added to make her name sound less grown-up and give it the extra fizz suited to the disco explosion, which, in 1977, the song arrived in the middle of. Raymond Earl of Philly band Instant Funk plays bass, recently deceased Philadelphia International Records great Dexter Wansel plays keys, and Sam Peake is on sax.
69
Bobby Rydell, “Wildwood Days”
Bobby Rydell speaks about his experiences in Wildwood after the dedication of his “Icon of the Wildwoods” mural, in May 2014.Michael S. Wirtz / Staff Photographer
Bobby Rydell had a big 1963. Not only did the South Philly musician — originally a drummer, who played in a teenage band with guitar great Pat Martino — costar in Bye Bye Birdie, he also scored a hit with “Forget Him.” “Wildwood Days” is the summertime excursion that has stood the test of time. It’s featured in Season 2 of Upper Darby native Tina Fey’s Netflix series The Four Seasons. Sixty-three years after its release, the song still soundtracks a summer down the Shore, where “Every day’s a holiday, and every night’s a Saturday night.”
68
Woody Guthrie, “Philadelphia Lawyer”
Woody Guthrie in March 1943 with his guitar.Courtesy of Library of Congress
Woody Guthrie’s cowboy ballad is not about a personal injury attorney who advertises on billboards on I-95 and the Schuylkill Expressway luring clients with a big sack of money. But it could be: The protest and folk singer who wrote the words “This Machine Kills Fascists” on his guitars characterizes Philadelphia lawyers as slick, not to be trusted operators. So when the title character gets repaid in blood for romancing a Nevada cowboy’s sweetheart, no tears are shed. Willie Nelson and the Maddox Brothers and Rose also do fine versions.
67
Santigold, “Creator”
Santigold performs on the Rocky Stage during the Made In America Music Festival along the Benjamin Franklin Parkway on Sept. 2, 2012.Yong Kim / Staff Photographer
Mount Airy-raised Santi White is a Philly all-star going back to her days leading Stiffed, the New Wave and ska rock band she fronted in the early ‘00s. After moving to New York, she soon broke through with a 2008 album that stylishly mixed, dub, electro, punk, hip-hop, and pop and made her an avatar of 21st-century cool. “I’m the creator, thrill is to make it up,” she singjays on “Creator,” which found its audience in part through exposure on Gossip Girl and a Bud Light Lime ad.
66
Blind Willie Dunn’s Gin Bottle Four, “Jet Black Blues”
Salvatore Massaro changed his name twice. As Eddie Lang, the South Philly native was known as the Father of Jazz Guitar. Then he called himself Blind Willie Dunn so he could break the music industry color line and team with jazz and blues guitarist Lonnie Johnson at a time when Black and white players making music together was taboo. This 1929 song is important music that’s also delightful; and also tinged with tragedy as Lang would die in 1933 at age 30 from complications from a tonsillectomy that his friend Bing Crosby urged him to have.
65
McCoy Tyner, “West Philly Tone Poem”
In this July 14, 2009, file photo, jazz pianist McCoy Tyner performs during the 43rd Montreux Jazz Festival in Montreux, Switzerland.Courtesy of AP
The giant of jazz piano, known for his thunderous playing and early collaborations with John Coltrane, sounds soft and lovely here. He is accompanied on bowed bass by a Philly jazz great of a younger generation, Southwest Philly’s Christian McBride.
64
Blue Magic, “Sideshow”
Written by MFSB guitarist Bobby Eli with Vinnie Barrett, and produced by Norman Harris, “Sideshow” is an achingly beautiful song with a soaring vocal by lead singer Ted “Wizard” Mills, released on Atco Records. It demonstrates just how rich the Philly soul scene was in the 1970s, with Sigma Sound players like Eli and Harris scoring No. 1 R&B hits on Philly artists outside of the Philadelphia International family.
63
The Dovells, “Bristol Stomp”
Vocal group the Dovells pose for a portrait in 1961.Courtesy of Getty Images
Dance music culture in Philadelphia in the early days of rock and roll was at such a fever pitch that a song about a teen dance craze in Bucks County could — with the help of American Bandstand — become a No. 2 national pop hit. Len Borisoff, the lead singer of the Dovells, who also had a smash with “You Can’t Sit Down,” later went on to solo fame as Len Barry, with the divine 1965 hit “1-2-3.”
62
The Menzingers, “Anna”
Tom May, co-frontman of the Menzingers, at Union Transfer on Nov. 24, 2018, for the “After The Party Tour.”Courtesy of Kristen Balderas
Like any power pop band worth its salt, Scranton-born and Philly-based the Menzingers excel at yearning. The thing they’re longing for in 2019’s “Anna” is quality time with their significant other. “Anna, I have so much to tell ya” rhymes with “Please come back to Philadelphia.”
61
Rachmaninoff, “Symphonic Dances”
Undated photo of pianist, conductor, and composer Sergei Rachmaninoff (left) and Eugene Ormandy.Courtesy of Marston
“Unquestionably, they are the finest orchestral combination in the world,” Rachmaninoff said of the Philadelphia Orchestra in 1931. Among the works he wrote specifically for the ensemble is his Symphonic Dances, his last major work and one of the most colorful and emotionally far-reaching. — Peter Dobrin
60
Sheer Mag, “Point Breeze”
Christina Halladay (left), Hart Seely, and Kyle Seely (right), sit in their rehearsal space on Grays Avenue in Southwest Philadelphia on Tuesday, Aug. 21, 2019. The three are part of the band Sheer Mag, which was formed in Philadelphia.Margo Reed / Staff Photographer
Anti-gentrification rock and roll! The Christina Halladay-fronted hard-rock quartet draws inspiration from 1970s bands like Thin Lizzy and the Clash. “Point Breeze,” from the band’s 2014 debut EP makes pointed reference to an OCF Realty office and notes that “the streets are changing, a white breeze is blowing through.”
59
Jim Croce, “You Don’t Mess Around With Jim”
Jim Croce, a South Philly native and Villanova grad.
South Philly native and Villanova grad Jim Croce met a “pool shootin’ son of a gun” named Big Jim Walker in a West Philly bar. The title cut to Croce’s 1972 breakout album was also the blueprint for his 1973 hit “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown,” which Philly troubadour Kenn Kweder sang in tribute to Croce at the Philly Music Alliance gala this spring.
58
The American Dream, “Frankford El”
What was true in 1970 remains so today: “You can’t get to heaven on the Frankford El.” The reason why is succinctly explained on this ramshackle tune by one of the leading Philadelphia rock bands of the countercultural era, whose one and only album was the first to be produced by Todd Rundgren: “Because the Frankford El goes straight to Frankford.”
57
Lady B, “To the Beat, Y’all”
DJ Lady B in the WRNB studio in 2011, her 30th year in hip-hop.Courtesy of Laurence Kesterson
As a pioneering Power 99 DJ, Wendy Clark boosted the careers of Schoolly D, Run-DMC, and especially DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince. But she also made music history in 1979 when she recorded this snappy single, the first rap song released by a Philadelphia artist or female artist anywhere. In 2015, Vibe called her “maybe the most influential female in hip-hop radio history.”
56
Marah, “Christian Street”
In a photo from 1999, Serge Bielanko (right) of the group Marah goes through a sound check. To his left is his brother Dave, who is also a member of the band.Peter Tobia / Staff Photographer
A tour down the South Philly artery, from the Conshohocken-raised Bielanko brothers’ scrappy Springsteen-y band's 2000 album Kids in Philly. “Saint Paul’s is for soul salvage, 9th Street for my fennel and leek,” Dave Bielanko sings, while shouting out Rocky Balboa and Angelo Bruno. “Stop by Snockey’s for a short Amaretto, when the moon comes up rising like a giant pizelle.” From the smell of pepper and egg sandwiches to the corner payphone “for bettin’ the numbers,” the song — and entire album — teem with life and capture a fleeting turn-of-the-millennium moment.
55
Al Ham & the Hillside Singers, “Move Closer To Your World”
The Action News theme song, composed by jingle writer Al Ham, with lyrics by former 6abc exec Walt Liss, is still everyday listening in Philadelphia living rooms, 54 years after its release. Honorable mention in the category of songs that seem to be in the air, if not the wooder: the Mister Softee ice cream truck jingle, written by Les Waas, which has been omnipresent on the streets of Philadelphia since 1960.
54 to 33
54
Low Cut Connie, “Boozophilia”
Low Cut Connie’s Adam Weiner performs at the Fillmore Philadelphia on Oct. 14, 2021.Elizabeth Robertson / Staff Photographer
Barack Obama might have put this Low Cut Connie song on his inaugural presidential playlist in 2025 because Adam Weiner calls out “the South Side of Chicago.” But the raucous workout by the Philly rock and soul band — which has a patriotic protest album called Livin In the USA due July 4 — is also a song of 215 pride. “Where do we live?” Weiner asks when the band rips it up onstage. “We live in South Philly!”
53
Japanese Breakfast, “Everybody Wants To Love You”
Japanese Breakfast’s Michelle Zauner performs during the “Melancholy Tour” stop at the Met Philadelphia on May 15, 2025.Elizabeth Robertson / Staff Photographer
The coat check that Michelle Zauner once operated at Union Transfer was named in her honor in 2021, and the H Mart that gave a name to her best-selling memoir, Crying In H Mart, about grief and her Korean identity is in Elkins Park. This super sticky love song was originally recorded for Zauner’s Bryn Mawr College band Birthday Girls before finding its audience on the 2016 Japanese Breakfast album Psychopomp.
52
George Crumb's “Black Angels”
George Crumb’s “Black Angels” is absolutely hair-raising stuff.Courtesy of George Crumb
There’s a reason Crumb’s piece was dropped into The Exorcist. It is absolutely hair-raising. The Philadelphia composer, who died in 2022, was perhaps unmatched in bringing unusual sounds into Western classical music — sitar, Tibetan prayer stones, toy piano, and pretty much anything he heard and liked. Black Angels uses an electrified string quartet, and as frightening as the work was as the soundtrack to a demon presence, its original, real-life reference was even more horrifying. Written into the 1970 score are the Latin words In tempore belli (“in time of war”), a reference to the piece as a lament of the Vietnam War.
— Peter Dobrin
51
Beanie Sigel and Eve, “Remember Them Days”
Rapper Beanie Sigel performs for a crowd at the 50th Anniversary of Hip-Hop celebration hosted at Lou and Choo's Lounge in North Philadelphia on July 1, 2023.Ed Newton / For The Inquirer
This gets the nod over “Philly, Philly,” this duo’s more on-the-nose 215 track, simply because it’s a much better song. The two rappers are nostalgic for the good old days when times were bad, with a Good Times reference: “Welfare and white landlord, that life ain’t easy / The only ones movin’ up was George and Weezy.”
50
Young Gunz, “Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop”
At the Project Brotherly Love Concert, Young Neef, of the group Young Gunz, jumped into the crowd and sang during the concert.Vicki Valerio / Staff Photographer
The 2003 debut single from hip-hop duo Young Gunz — part of Beanie Sigel’s State Property crew — rides a minimalist groove and brims with youthful self-confidence. Rappers Young Chris and Neef Buck sound giddy: “The girls, the girls, they love us / ‘Cause we stay fresh to death, we the best, nothing less.” An ode to the hip-hop hustler’s life also lent its name to author Jeff Chang’s history of the culture.
49
The Intruders, “Cowboys To Girls”
The IntrudersCourtesy of the Artist
My mother would be disappointed that I didn’t pick “I’ll Always Love My Mama,” a single I’m proud to say I bought in 1973. The Intruders’ first big Gamble- and Huff-penned hit arrived in 1968 and was recorded pre-Sigma Sound at Cameo Parkway studio on South Broad Street. The group’s delicate harmonies and Bobby Martin’s gossamer arrangement are a perfect fit for the sweet innocence of the coming-of-age lyric.
48
Lee Morgan, “The Sidewinder”
American Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers with Lee Morgan, Jymie Merritt, and Art Blakey, Copenhagen, Denmark, December 1960.Courtesy of Getty Images
Named not for a venomous snake but a TV villain, “The Sidewinder” was then-25-year-old Philly trumpeter Lee Morgan’s comeback record; a jaunty, burst of soul-jazz with a boogaloo beat that put him back on track after a battle with heroin addiction. Its infectious energy and irresistible groove made it the high mark of Morgan’s career until he was tragically shot to death by his common-law wife in 1972. The song was added to the Library of Congress National Recording Registry in 2024.
47
Lil Uzi Vert, “XO Tour Llif3”
Lil Uzi Vert performs on the Liberty Stage in 2022.Heather Khalifa / Staff Photographer
“Push me to the edge, all my friends are dead”: Is that a dark look into the abyss, or a proud boast that Lil Uzi’s wallet is stuffed with Dead Presidents? The artist born Symere Woods, who grew up in the Francisville section of the city, is the only Philadelphia artist to ever release three consecutive albums to reach No. 1 on the pop charts. This dark, dreamy, addictive song sent the first of those, 2017’s Luv Is Rage 2, straight to the top.
46
Dr. Dog, “Where’d All The Time Go?”
Dr. Dog – (from left) Dmitri Matos (kneeling), Eric Slick, Scott McMicken, Frank McElroy, Zach Miller, and Toby Leaman.David Swanson / Staff Photographer
As a rock band that built a wide audience with a 1960s inspired buoyant sound, which helped put the Philly music scene on the map this century, Dr. Dog unquestionably belongs on the list. But what song from an 11-album run? This Scott McMicken-sung deep cut from 2010’s Shame, Shame cuts the band's easy charm with an undercurrent of dread. Thanks to TikTok, it’s far and away their most frequently streamed track, with over 600 million clicks. Honorable mention: “Philadelphia Lights,” by the band’s drummer, Eric Slick.
45
Billie Holiday, “Strange Fruit”
Billie Holiday singing at the Downbeat in New York, circa February 1947.Courtesy of Library of Congress
Billie Holiday was born in Philadelphia General Hospital in West Philly’s Black Bottom neighborhood in 1915. She grew up in Baltimore, but often stayed at the Douglass Hotel at 1409 Lombard St. when performing at the Showboat venue in the hotel basement. “Strange Fruit,” her harrowing anti-lynching protest song written by Abel Meeropol, was named song of the century by Time in 1999. It's also the name of a Zoe Leonard art installation at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, inspired by Holiday’s song.
44
Soul Survivors, “Expressway To Your Heart”
Soul Survivors, the soul-rock band founded by Charlie Ingui and his late brother RichieCourtesy of Getty Images
In 1967, Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff penned and produced this R&B hit for the soul-rock band founded by Charlie Ingui and his late brother Richie. Charlie still regularly performs with David Uosikkinen’s In The Pocket, whose entire repertoire consists of Philly songs like those found on this list. Inspired by I-76, the highway that bifurcates the City of Brotherly Love. Then as now: It’s much too crowded!
43
Sun Ra, “Space Is The Place”
Marshall Allen on the saxophone and vocalist Tara Middleton (right) perform during the Sun Ra Arkestra: Marshall Allen Birthday Celebration at the Lounge at World Cafe Live on May 27, 2023.Elizabeth Robertson / Staff Photographer
Interplanetary avant-jazz from the Afro-Futurist bandleader born Herman Poole Blount, who lived in Philadelphia from 1968 until his death in 1993. His steadily gigging sui generis Arkestra — fronted by the remarkable 102-year-old sax player Marshall Allen — still calls Germantown home.
42
The Orlons, “South Street”
The Orlons in the 1960s. The "South Street" singers were inducted into the Philadelphia Music Alliance Walk of Fame in 2025.Courtesy of the Artist
It’s where “the hippest,” not the hippies meet. Hippies weren’t a thing in 1963, when the Orlons released the song. The unorthodox vocal group, named after a synthetic fabric, had three female singers in lead vocalist Rosetta Hightower, Shirley Brickley, and Marlena Davis plus Stephen Caldwell. The song was written by Kal Mann and Dave Appell, who also penned hits by the Dovells and Bobby Rydell on this list.
41
Pink, “Get The Party Started”
Pink performs at Citizens Bank Park on September 18, 2023.Steven M. Falk / Staff Photographer
Doylestown’s own Alecia Moore didn’t write this song — Linda Perry of 4 Non Blondes did. But it was a smash hit that kick-started the success of Pink’s 2001 artistic breakthrough Mizzundaztood. And its irrepressible dance-pop energy helped create the enormously likable Pink persona that’s carried her to stadium-size aerial acrobatic superstardom.
40
Sister Rosetta Tharpe, “This Train”
Sister Rosetta Tharpe jams with (from left) Hot Lips Page, Duke Ellington and Cab Calloway in August 1939 at Burris Jenkins Studio in New York City.
Sanctified gospel singer and electric guitar pioneer Sister Rosetta Tharpe was born in Cotton Plant, Ark., and scored her most influential hits, like “Strange Things Happening Every Day” and “Rock Me,” years before she moved to Philadelphia in 1960. But she resided here until her death in 1973, and is buried in Northwood Cemetery in West Oak Lane, so we’re claiming her. “This Train” was recorded in 1939 and remained a staple of her concerts through her Philly years, including the 1964 tour of Europe witnessed by British guitar heroes like Keith Richards and Jimmy Page. Take a listen to Bruce Springsteen’s “Land of Hope and Dreams” and hear the echo of “This Train.”
39
James A. Bland, “Oh, Dem Golden Slippers”
A portrait of composer and minstrel performer James A. Bland (1854–1911) at the Mummers Museum on Dec. 29, 2025.Tom Gralish / Staff Photographer
The minstrelsy song that soundtracks the Mummers Parade in Philadelphia every New Year’s Day was written by a Black man and prolific songwriter who often had to wear blackface himself while performing in minstrel shows.
Bland’s “Oh, Dem Golden Slippers” was written in 1878 as a parody of the spiritual “Golden Slippers,” popularized by the Fisk Jubilee Singers, which celebrated the finery believers expected to wear in the afterlife after ascending to heaven. Bland moved to Philadelphia in 1901 and four years later, his second most famous song — he also wrote “Carry Me Back to Old Virginny” — was first performed by parading Mummers. In 1911, he died penniless. He’s buried in Merion Memorial Park in Bala Cynwyd, where the great Mississippi bluesman Skip James is also interred.
38
Charlie Gracie, “Fabulous”
Charlie Gracie in the 1950s.Courtesy of the Charlie Gracie Family
Philadelphia’s first rock-and-roll star scored two rockabilly hits that topped the pop charts in 1957: the sweetly romantic “Butterfly” and this hiccuping gem which was a Top 10 hit in England, and had a profound effect on a 15-year-old Paul McCartney.
37
“Fly, Eagles, Fly,” “Here Come The Sixers,” and “High Hopes”
Richard Sherwood, Terry Rocap, Randy Childress, Frank McDonnell, and Joe Sherwood when they were in a rock band called Wellington Arrangement. Rocap, Childress, and Joe Sherwood later formed Fresh Aire and wrote "Here Come The Sixers."Courtesy of Randy Chi
OK, we’re cheating here. This is a Philly sports music three for one. “Fly, Eagles, Fly,” the battle cry penned by 1950s admen Charles Borelli and Roger Courtland has been covered by the Roots and Coldplay, and is sung not only at Eagles games but at concerts and other sporting events by Philadelphians eager to express their love for their Iggles and their city. It’s the musical way to say: “Go Birds!”
Catchier still is “Here Come The Sixers,” the disco-ish ditty that counts down — “10, 9, 8, 76ers! … 3, 4, 5, Sixers!” — heard at Xfinity Mobile Arena in the closing seconds of every home win. “Play the song!” means victory has been secured. And “High Hopes” is the Jimmy Van Heusen-Sammy Cahn song sung by Frank Sinatra in the 1959 A Hole In the Head, which the late Phillies announcer Harry Kalas shows up to sing on the big screen at Citizens Bank Park at the close of every win. Go Phils!
36
Clara Ward and the Ward Sisters, “How I Got Over”
Gospel singer Clara Ward (at the piano) and Gertrude Ward (left) rehearse in a studio circa 1955.Courtesy of Getty Images
The classic gospel hymn and civil rights anthem that Ward wrote in 1951 was sung by Mahalia Jackson at the March on Washington in 1963. It also inspired the title track to the Roots’ 2010 album of the same name.
35
Elton John, “Philadelphia Freedom”
English pop singer Elton John in a flamboyant stage outfit of white suit with feather trim and rhinestone encrusted glasses, circa 1973.Courtesy of Terry O’ Neil Iconic Images
It’s not the greatest Philadelphia song by a British rock superstar — that would be David Bowie’s “Young Americans.” But this one was written by John and lyricist Bernie Taupin for Billie Jean King, then player/coach of the mixed gender World Team Tennis franchise, the Philadelphia Freedoms. An inscription on the label of the 45 reads “To B.J.K. and the Soulful Sounds of Philadelphia.”
Released in 1975, it became a Bicentennial anthem, a No. 1 hit, and later, a gay pride anthem. At the time, however, John saw it as an example of his overexposure: “I wish the bloody thing would piss off,” he told an interviewer about the song. “I can see why people get sick and tired of me. In America I get sick and tired of hearing myself on AM radio.”
34
Barbara Mason, “Yes, I’m Ready”
Singer Barbara Mason at Sigma Sound Studios in the 1970s, with (left to right) Norman Harris, Bobby Eli, Earl Young, and an unknown musician.Courtesy of Arthur Stoppe
Freeway, left, and Beanie Sigel perform at Gillie Fest 2023 at Franklin Music Hall in Philadelphia on Saturday, July 29, 2023.Heather Khalifa / Staff Photographer
The lead single for the 2003 debut album by Freeway — also known as Philly Freeway, also known as Leslie Pridgen Jr. — features Jay-Z, and was produced by Just Blaze. It samples Creative Source’s 1974 “I Just Can’t See Myself Without You,” which provides the song’s memorable morally conflicted hook about carrying on with sketchy activities “even though what we do is wrong.”
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MFSB, featuring the Three Degrees, “T.S.O.P. (The Sound of Philadelphia)”
Earl Young seated on the right at the front in an early 1970s photo of MFSB (Mother, Father, Sister, Brother), the group of musicians who regularly played on songs produced by Kenny Gamble, Leon Huff and Thom Bell that were recorded at Sigma Sound Studios in Philadelphia.Courtesy of Earl Young
The studio musicians based at Sigma Sound Studios, who were in essence the Philadelphia International Records house band, called themselves Mother, Father, Sister, Brother. In 1974, the band built around the rhythm section of Ronnie Baker, Norman Harris, and Earl Young topped the charts with this largely instrumental number which became the theme to Soul Train. Vocals are by the Three Degrees, the trio that scored a hit that year with “When Will I See You Again,” and who — fun fact! — was the favorite group of then Prince and now King Charles.
31
The Hooters, “All You Zombies”
The Hooters, founded by Rob Hyman and Eric Bazilian, who met in 1971 as students at the University of Pennsylvania.Courtesy of Michael Dwornik
It’s a toss-up between this and “And We Danced” for the definitive Hooters song. The Rob Hyman- and Eric Bazilian-led band, who played Live Aid and defined Philly rock in the 1980s, is still kicking it with a robust fan base today. The biblical, reggaefied “Zombies” gets the nod for sheer weirdness, and Hyman and Bazilian deserve props for other songwriting successes such as Hyman’s “Time After Time” for Cyndi Lauper and Bazilian’s Joan Osborne hit “One Of Us.”
30
The Dead Milkmen, “Punk Rock Girl”
American satirical punk rock band The Dead Milkmen perform on stage at Cabaret Metro on March 3, 1989 in Chicago, Illinois, USA. Left to right: Dean Clean (Dean Sabatino), Joe Jack Talcum (Joe Genaro), Dave Blood (Dave Schulthise, 1956 – 2004) and singer Joe Jack Talcum (Rodney Linderman).Courtesy of Getty Images
Guitarist Joe Genaro takes the lead with singer Rodney Anonymous only occasionally chiming in on this 1988 juvenile delinquent ditty that nicely encapsulates the band’s bratty aesthetic. It’s a love song about a couple who meet at Zipperhead, the famed South Street punk rock emporium that closed in 2005 (but its unzipped facade remains). They then head out in search of Mojo Nixon records as they refuse, as always, to take themselves seriously.
29
The Philadelphia Orchestra and Leopold Stokowski, “Fantasia”
Conductor Anthony Parnther leads the Philadelphia Orchestra and The Crossing during the world premiere performance of “A Hundred Years On” at the Highmark Mann Center in Philadelphia on Wednesday, June 17, 2026.Elizabeth Roberston / Staff Photographer
The Philadelphia Orchestra and Leopold Stokowski recorded most of the soundtrack to the 1940 Disney film, including the conductor’s towering orchestration of Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D Minor. Stoki made it OK to take liberties with Bach (and others), a practice that only makes the rich Philadelphia Sound more convincing as the musical herd today follows the orthodoxy of early instruments and historical accuracy. — Peter Dobrin
28
The War On Drugs, “I Don’t Live Here Anymore”
War on Drugs frontman Adam Granduciel performs during the group’s “A Drugcember To Remember" show at Johnny Brenda's in Fishtown on Friday, December 19, 2025.Yong Kim / Staff Photographer
For the most part, the War On Drugs don’t live here anymore, though keyboard player Robbie Bennett and drummer Charlie Hall reside in the area, and Hall has a major impact as a bandleader and producer. Drugs main man Adam Granduciel decamped to Los Angeles a number of years ago.
This terrific 2021 song isn’t about departing Philadelphia — it’s about moving on to new creative places. Its title does call attention, though, to a pattern that’s shaped the Philly music scene this century. (Relatively) cheap rent and a vibrant musical community created conditions for young bands to thrive. When they make it big — like the Drugs, or Japanese Breakfast — they frequently move on, but still consider themselves Philly bands, because the city crept into their DNA.
27
Samuel Barber, “Adagio for Strings”
Samuel Barber circa 1932, when he was a student at Curtis.Courtesy of Curtis Archives
It had its beginnings as one movement in a string quartet, and then the string orchestra version became our national soundtrack to grief. Barber was a product of the Curtis Institute of Music, and though he went on to make incredibly valuable contributions to American music — Knoxville: Summer of 1915 on a text of James Agee is perhaps the high point — nothing has become as ingrained in the country’s consciousness as the Adagio. Billy Joel once said: “I hope before I can’t write anymore, I can create music like that.” — Peter Dobrin
26
Bill Conti, “Gonna Fly Now (Theme From ‘Rocky’)”
Music Director for the 78th Academy Awards Bill Conti at the Capitol Records building in Hollywood during rehearsals for the 78th Academy Awards on February 27, 2006.Courtesy of Getty Images
The music that scored Sylvester Stallone’s scamper up the Art Museum steps in Rocky caps off one of the most irresistible inspirational scenes in Hollywood history. The film score composer and conductor lifted the trumpet intro from an anonymous 17th-century Italian sonatina. Fitting enough for the hortatory theme music for the Italian Stallion, and the city of Philadelphia itself.
25
The Trammps, “Disco Inferno”
The Trammps (from left) Stanley Wade, Harold Wade, Earl Young, Robert Upchurch, and Jimmy Ellis.Courtesy of Atlantic Records
This absolute burner of a disco-defining hit was inspired by the 1974 disaster movie The Towering Inferno. It features an incendiary vocal by Jimmy Ellis and archetypal four-on-the-floor drumming by drummer Earl Young, the MFSB member and Trammps founder who also sings a bass vocal on the track. It was a modest hit when it came out in 1976, but gained in popularity when a 10-minute plus version was included on the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack. Burn, baby, burn!
24
William DeVaughn, “Be Thankful For What You Got”
William DeVaughn poses for a studio portrait in 1974 in the United States.Courtesy of Gilles Petard
William DeVaughn was a one-hit wonder. But what a hit that one hit was! DeVaughn was a government employee in Washington and he paid $900 to get his song, originally called “A Cadillac Don’t Come Easy,” recorded at Joe Tarsia’s Sigma Sound with MFSB member John Davis’ Omega Sound production company.
“Be Thankful”’s simple message of gratitude is timeless, and it doesn’t hurt that DeVaughn sounds so much like Curtis Mayfield that the song is often misunderstood to be one of Mayfield’s own.
And while the 1974 song’s message is ultimately anti-materialist, its slinky groove and repeated lyric — “Diamond in the back, sunroof top, diggin’ the scene with a gangsta lean” — has made it irresistible to hip-hop producers.
It was sampled by N.W.A. in “Gangsta, Gangsta,” and scores of others, including De La Soul, A Tribe Called Quest, and A$AP Rocky. And in Bill Nicoletti’s Sigma documentary, The Philly Sound: Heard ’Round the World, Tarsia’s status as a major player in creating the Sound of Philadelphia is underscored as as he cruises around Philly with DeVaughn’s No. 1 R&B hit pumping out of the speakers.
23
The Spinners, “Could It Be I’m Falling In Love”
The Spinners’ members were from Detroit, but became one of the shining lights of Philly soul when producer-arranger Thom Bell took on the challenge of turning the journeyman vocal group into 1970s top 40 stars. He succeeded magically, perhaps never more so than with this elegant, bewitching ballad. It’s marked by Bell’s delicate musical embellishments, Bobby Smith and Philippe Wynne’s dazzling lead vocals, and backup singers including Linda Creed and the trio of Barbara Ingram, Carla Benson, and Evette Benton, who were known as the Sweethearts of Sigma.
22
Ween, “Spirit of ’76”
Ween group portrait: Dean Ween, Gene Ween, Claude Coleman Jr, and Andrew Weiss. Hof Ter Lo, Antwerp, Belgium, March 27 1995.Courtesy of Getty Images
What better way to celebrate Philadelphia’s role in the founding of the U.S. than with Gene and Dean Ween? New Hope DIY music savant duo of Aaron Freeman and Mickey Melchiondo is a master of many styles. On this single, the two create a Philly soul music pastiche that's not only highly amusing but also — as is Ween’s wont — musically on point.
The video features the duo stealing the Liberty Bell, and with Freeman’s falsetto in fine form. “Fairmount Park in the summer, lookin’ good on the street,” he sings. “Mannequin was filmed at Woolworth’s, Boyz II Men still keepin’ up the beat.”
(Mannequin was actually filmed at Wanamakers, but Boyz II Men were, in fact, doing their part…)
21
Todd Rundgren, “Hello, It’s Me”
Todd Rundgren on stage at the Spectrum, Oct. 23, 2009.David M. Warren / Staff Photographer
Upper Darby’s finest! Todd Rundgren got his start in the Philadelphia music scene in the 1960s, first with bluesy Woody’s Truck Stop and power-pop band the Nazz, whose “Open My Eyes” probably deserves a spot on this list as well.
Rundgren’s list of credits as a producer is staggering: Patti Smith, XTC, Meatloaf, the Cars. He was raised on the radio by legendary Philly DJs like Jerry Blavat, Jimmy Bishop, and Georgie Woods. “I grew up listening to the Geator,” he told an audience at a Philly Music Walk of Fame gala in 2019. “He played the music that would have been called race records at the time. And that’s why so many white kids in Philly grew up wanting to sing R&B.”
“Hello, It’s Me” introduced Rundgren to the world. It was the first song he ever wrote. Its music was shaped by Rundgren’s reaction to Philly jazz organ great Jimmy Smith’s introduction to a version of “When Johnny Comes Marching Home.” It first appeared as a Nazz song as the B-side of “Open My Eyes” in 1968 and then on a different, more uptempo version on Rundgren’s 1972 double album solo debut Something/Anything?
20
Patti LaBelle, “If Only You Knew”
American R&B singer Patti Labelle sings with emotion during the Live Aid famine relief concert at JFK Stadium in Philadelphia, Pa., July 13, 1985.Courtesy of AP
There are so many Patti LaBelle eras. Her early ‘60s days with Patti LaBelle and the Blue Belles, the 1970s “Lady Marmalade” period in the group Labelle with Sarah Dash and Nona Hendryx and New Orleans producer Allen Toussaint, as well as the trio’s contributions to Laura Nyro’s classic Philly soul album Gonna Take A Miracle.
This song, written by Dexter Wansel and Cynthia Briggs, came at a key moment in her career, when she had joined Philadelphia International Records and was in need of a hit. She got a 1983 No. 1 R&B chart-topper with this subtle love song that starts off restrained before cutting loose with full Ms. Patti force. It set the stage for “New Attitude” the next year, and her showstopping performance at Live Aid in 1985.
19
DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince, “Summertime”
Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince, Will Smith, c. 1990Courtesy of Getty Images
A truly iconic track in Philly hip-hop culture. Why did the Roots feel compelled to move its annual festival to Belmont Plateau this year? Of course, because the Fairmount Park hilltop with a view of the Center City skyline was a favorite hip-hop hangout in the 1980s and 1990s. But also because that era was immortalized and made famous by “Summertime.”
“Back in Philly we be out in the park,” Will Smith rhymes on the breezy, laidback track, which samples “Summer Madness” by Kool & the Gang. “A place called the plateau is where everybody go.”
Smith, who was 23 at the time, was already missing his carefree youth: “As I think back, makes me wonder how the smell of the grill could spark up nostalgia.”
Now, it’s the sound of this song that does the trick.
18
Boyz II Men, “Motownphilly”
Boyz II Men members, from left, Wanya Morris, Nathan Vanderpool, Shawn Stockman and Mike McCary pose at the American Music Awards in Los Angeles, Calif., on Jan. 25, 1993.Courtesy of AP
Boyz II Men came together in the late 1980s at South Philly’s High School for the Creative and Performing Arts. (Amazingly, they overlapped at CAPA with Black Thought and Questlove, and also jazz greats Christian McBride and Joey DeFrancesco.)
Released in 1991, it was the first single from the quartet’s Cooleyhighharmony debut. It’s not the band’s biggest song — both “End Of The Road” and “One Sweet Day,” with Mariah Carey, were even bigger later in the decade. But “Motownphilly” put the band on the map. The quartet of Shawn Stockman, Michael McCary, Nathan Morris, and Wanya Morris revived the Philly vocal harmony concept that harkens back to the street-corner soul sounds of the 1950s updated as modern “doo wop-hip-hop.”
17
Kurt Vile, “Pretty Pimpin”
Kurt Vile performs during a show at Anchor Rock Club in Atlantic City, NJ on Saturday, January 15, 2022.Miguel Martinez / For The Inquirer
Kurt Vile’s stream of consciousness songwriting and guileless self-regard are at their most appealing on this single from 2015’s B’lieve I’m Goin Down. In this song, the singer-guitarist encounters his reflection in the mirror and isn’t sure who he sees. But then he carries on as always, in pursuing his raison d’etre: “All I wanted to do was have some fun, and live my life like a son of a gun.”
Vile, who has his own mural in Northern Liberties, always reps his hometown hard — his new album is called Philadelphia’s Been Good To Me.
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Schoolly D, “P.S.K. What Does It Mean?”
Rapper Schoolly D, aka Jesse Weaver, poses inside Taylor's cafe in Philadelphia, PA on May 17, 2017.David Maialetti / Staff Photographer
P.S.K. stands for Park Side Killas, which was the name of a West Philly gang that Schoolly D (aka Jesse Weaver) was affiliated with when, along with DJ Code Money, he made the massively influential reverb-drenched single. This 1985 track and its “Gucci Time” flipside are rightly considered to be the first gangsta rap recordings.
Schoolly has gone on to have an intriguing career: scoring films for Abel Ferrara, and making music for Aqua Teen Hunger Force. But if “P.S.K. What Does It Mean?” was all he ever did, his impact would still have been enormous.
The murky, unexpurgated content opened the door for West Coast rappers like Ice-T and Eazy-E, then East Coast MCs such as Notorious B.I.G. The sheer number of acts who sampled the chilling, spooky Roland TR-909 drum machine beat is staggering; that list includes Siouxsie & the Banshees, DJ Khaled, Eminem, and more.
15
Stylistics, “You Make Me Feel Brand New”
The Stylistics were one of Philadelphia's best known groups in the 1970s. Known for their smooth ballads, The Stylistics produced such hits as "You Make Me Feel Brand New" and "Betcha By Golly, Wow."Courtesy of The Artist
The Stylistics toss-up comes down to two compositions from Thom Bell (who posthumously went into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2025) and Linda Creed (who will be inducted this year). The quandary is between this one, from 1974, and “Betcha By Golly, Wow,” which was originally recorded under another title by Connie Stevens in 1970 before the Philly vocal group led by Russell Thompkins Jr. did it two years later.
Both are sublime. But I’ll go with “You Make Me Feel Brand New,” because Thompkins and his bandmate Airrion Love, who share vocal duties, make heartfelt sentiments like “Without you, life has no reason or rhyme / Like notes to a song out of time,” ringing true as their voices float about Bell’s feathery orchestrations. And also because Creed wrote the lyrics for Bell, and it’s such a tender expression of personal connection between the two halves of one of soul music's all-time greatest songwriter teams.
14
John Coltrane, “Giant Steps”
John Coltrane started playing the saxophone at age 13, and came to Philadelphia from North Carolina after high school to try to make it in music.Courtesy of AP
John Coltrane was born in North Carolina, but spent most of the 1950s in a house on North 33rd Street in Strawberry Mansion that the former Navy seaman bought in 1952 with a grant from the G.I. Bill. It was there that he wrote much of Giant Steps, the landmark album where he pioneered the wildly expressive “sheets of sound” approach to melodic phrasing that transformed modern jazz.
Other Giant Steps classics include “Cousin Mary,” about his cousin Mary Lyerly Alexander who lived in the Strawberry Mansion house for decades after Coltrane’s death in 1967. “Naima,” written for his then-wife Juanita Naima Grubbs, is a lovely ballad that has been covered by many artists, including a gorgeous live version recorded at the Tin Angel in Old City by the Philadelphia jazz guitar virtuoso Pat Martino.
13
David Bowie, “Young Americans”
David Bowie, from "Who Can I Be Now? 1974-1976." One album in the set was recorded at Philadelphia's Sigma Sound Studios.Courtesy of David Bowie Archive
David Bowie came to Sigma Sound Studios in 1974 seeking Philadelphia soul. The English rock star, shapeshifting out of a glam-rock phase, came away with his version of the Philly sound, which he called “plastic soul.” He, however, used his own musicians, rather than the Philly musicians of MFSB.
The Bowie Sigma sessions are the stuff of legend. There was a studio visit from Bruce Springsteen, who took the bus from Jersey and whose music Bowie was enamored of at the time. Then they recorded versions of “Growin’ Up” and “It’s Hard To Be A Saint In the City.”
Then there are the “Sigma Kids,” who slept outside the 12th Street studio to get a glimpse of their hero, with Bowie eventually inviting them in. Decades later, the ardor of those fans is undiminished, with Sigma Kid Patti Brett being the force behind January’s annual Philly Loves Bowie Week.
“Young Americans” is a remarkable track, with a sashaying groove featuring Carlos Alomar’s guitar, David Sanborn’s honking saxophone, and backup vocals by a young Luther Vandross and Ava Cherry, Bowie’s girlfriend at the time.
The song’s lyrics about a honeymooning couple for whom things are not going so well — “It took him minutes, took her nowhere” — is full of stream of consciousness impressions of American culture on the eve of the celebration of the country’s 200th birthday in Philadelphia. Richard Nixon, Ford Mustang, and Soul Train all get referenced.
12
Billy Paul, “Me and Mrs. Jones”
Billy Paul, back in 1975.
“We got a thing, goin’ on….” Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff got the idea for what might be the greatest cheating song of all time when they noticed a couple cozying up on a daily basis in the downstairs bar at the Schubert Building on South Broad Street. That building is also where the songwriters met in an elevator in a chance encounter years before. (It now houses the Miller Theater.)
Paul was a veteran jazz-soul singer who had recorded first for the Gamble label and then Gamble and Huff’s Neptune label, before having success with 360 Degrees of Billy Paul, his second album for Philadelphia International. It came out in 1972 and included “Me and Mrs. Jones,” which packs an emotional wallop when the moody instrumentation drops out and Paul sounds equally tortured and enraptured as he belts out the song’s title.
“Me and Mrs. Jones” topped the pop and R&B charts and won Paul a Grammy, but its follow-up single, the Gamble and Huff-penned “Am I Black Enough For You?” was judged to be “too militant” by radio stations and was a commercial failure. Schoolly D then sampled it on a song of the same name in 1989.
11
Marian Anderson, “Deep River”
Marian Anderson sings on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on Easter 1939. In 1936, she had been prohibited from performing in Washington's Constitution Hall by its owners, the Daughters of the American Revolution.Courtesy of AP
Deep is the operative word here — a deep (and exceedingly rare) contralto voice, and a deep well of yearning. The South Philadelphia-born Anderson brings not just introspection to the spiritual, which was arranged and popularized by Harry T. Burleigh, but also tremendous authority. When she sings of “that promised land, where all is peace,” you are there. — Peter Dobrin
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Jill Scott, “A Long Walk”
Jill Scott performs at The Met on March 16, 2023.Charles Fox / Staff Photographer
Philly rowhouse culture gets spotlighted in “A Long Walk,” a standout single from Jill Scott’s 2002 debut album Who Is Jill Scott? Words & Sounds Vol.1., which established her as a multi-hyphenate singer-poet-songwriter-actress. This year, she is part of the city’s July Fourth celebration, and has three shows coming up at the Met in July.
The video to this signature song finds Jilly from North Philly getting up from her steps to contemplate the possibilities of a relationship that would include “conversation, verbal elation, stimulation,” and might be helped along by a stroll around the park in hopes of finding “a spot for us to spark.”
9
Bruce Springsteen, “Streets of Philadelphia”
Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band perform during The River Tour (#TheRiverTour) at Citizens Bank Park in Phila.,Pa. on September 7, 2016.Elizabeth Robertson / Staff Photographer
“Streets of Philadelphia” was written for Jonathan Demme’s Tom Hanks and Denzel Washington-starring 1994 film Philadelphia, which was one of the first mainstream Hollywood movies to deal with the HIV/AIDs epidemic in the U.S.
It’s a moody Bruce number, a sturdy march with his zoned out vocals cushioned by synthesizers in a spare, somber arrangement that soundtracks a man alone, his body ravaged by disease wondering if anyone will come to his aid.
“I was bruised and battered, couldn’t tell what I felt / I was unrecognizable to myself,” Springsteen sings, with his vocal bolstered by the voice of Little Jimmy Scott, ghostly in the background. “Oh brother, are you going to leave me wastin’ away, on the streets of Philadelphia?”
The song won an Oscar — beating out Neil Young’s “Philadelphia” from the same film — as well as four Grammys. It was Springsteen’s biggest hit of the ‘90s, and though it seemed like an isolated one-off, Springsteen fans learned last year that the Boss had actually recorded an entire Streets of Philadelphia Sessions album that was included in last year’s Tracks II box.
With its video that opens with an overhead shot of City Hall and shots of the Boss walking in Port Richmond, Camden, and by the Sacks Playground in South Philly, “Streets” is an obvious choice for the Springsteen Philly song. There are other options though, like “The Fever,” the unreleased track that became a radio hit on WMMR-FM (93.3) after Springsteen’s DJ pal Ed Sciaky put it in heavy rotation. And “Atlantic City,” the down the Shore corollary to “Streets” that has become the most popular Springsteen choice for artists to cover when they come through Philly.
8
Chubby Checker, “The Twist”
Chubby Checker, 20-year-old Philadelphia entertainer who started the "Twist" dance craze that has swept the nation, shows just how it's done with a hip-swiveling demonstration at a press reception in London, England, Dec. 14, 1961.Courtesy of AP
Until it was dethroned by the Weeknd’s “Blinding Lights” in 2020, Chubby Checker’s 1960 hit “The Twist” was ranked by Billboard as the No. 1 single on its all-time Hot 100 chart.
That’s 60 years at the top for the song that democratized dance culture. As Checker — who finally was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2025 — has pointed out, the hip-swiveling anyone-can-do-it dance meant anyone could do it on their own. You didn’t need a partner to do “The Twist.”
The song’s origin story has many … well, twists. It was written by Hank Ballard and was a No. 28 hit for him and his band the Midnighters in 1960. (Though Midnighters member Lawson Smith claimed Ballard stole it from its real author, Nathaniel Bills of the Gospel Consolators.)
Baltimore TV host Buddy Deane — whose dance show inspired John Waters’ 1988 movie Hairspray — recommended the song to Dick Clark, who tried to book Ballard on American Bandstand.
When Ballard was unavailable, Clark needed a substitute and landed on the teenager called Ernest Evans. Cameo Parkway songwriter Kal Mann first noticed the kid when Evans was working at Farm Fresh Poultry in the Italian Market, and would sing to entertain customers.
When Clark’s wife Barbara heard Evans’ impression of Fats Domino, she suggested the stage name Chubby Checker. His version of “The Twist” went to No. 1 after he performed it at the Rainbow Club in Wildwood and on Bandstand in the summer of 1960. It topped the chart again in 1962 after he performed it on TheEd Sullivan Show. It wasn’t Checker’s only dance craze hit: He also scored with “The Fly,” “Litbo Rock,” and of course “Let’s Twist Again.”
7
The Roots feat. Erykah Badu and Eve, “You Got Me”
(L-R) Erykah Badu, Black Thought of the Roots, and Eve perform at the Hennessy Artistry concert series on October 14, 2010 in New York City.Courtesy of Johnny Nunez
The best known song by the Roots — second place would go to “The Seed (2.0)” with Cody Chesnutt — was very much a group effort. Not just by the Roots themselves, but also by the trio of women that gave the heady hip-hop ballad its hooky chorus and pop appeal.
The song is the first single off Things Fall Apart, the 1999 release named after the 1958 novel by Nigerian author Chinua Achebe that is widely considered to be the band’s best album, and is a collaboration with Jill Scott, Erykah Badu, and Eve.
Scott wrote the melody and the words to the song's hypnotic hook about the challenges of a long distance relationship: “Baby don’t worry you know that you got me.” But the band’s label, MCA, wanted a bigger name to sing it because she was little known outside Philly. Badu was already an established star with a blockbuster 1997 album in Baduizm, which was largely recorded with the Roots at Sigma Sound Studio in Philadelphia. So she was brought in to sing the hook.
Up and coming rapper Eve Jeffers — then known as Eve of Destruction before her debut album came out later that year — portrayed Black Thought’s love interest in the song and acquitted herself with aplomb. But because of a technical error, she wasn’t awarded a Grammy when “You Got Me” won for best rap performance in 2000. That was finally rectified when she finally got her trophy in 2026.
6
Hall and Oates, “She’s Gone”
From left, John Oates, G.E.Smith and Daryl Hall perform collectively as Hall and Oates onstage at JFK Stadium in Philadelphia Pa. for the Live Aid famine relief concert July 13, 1985.Courtesy of AP
So many hits, it’s impossible to pick.
I considered “Fall in Philadelphia” but then I thought: I can't go for that, no can do. Because that’s a song — from the duo’s 1972 debut Whole Oats — that’s really about having had enough of the City of Brotherly Love, and needing to get away from a city of “seven million people without a hope.”
Like Gamble and Huff, Daryl Hall and John Oates met in an elevator, but in their case, at the Adelphi Ballroom in West Philly. The soul-pop band went on to become the most commercially successful duo in history.
Though they are currently at odds with one another and appear to be broken up for good — they last performed together in 2022 — they had a remarkable run, scoring 16 top ten hits, with songs like “You Make My Dreams,” “Sara Smile,” and “Maneater” all bearing the influence of the Philly soul and Motown records they grew up on.
“She’s Gone” was on their 1973 album Abandoned Luncheonette and initially stiffed in as a single, but was a hit when it was re-released in 1976. The duo teamed up on the heartbroken verses, and Hall sings the chorus (which Oates wrote) with a soaring vocal that makes it sound like something cataclysmic has occurred: “She gone, and she’s gone / Oh why, what went wrong?!”
5
The Delfonics, “La-La (Means I Love You)”
The Delfonics in the late 1960s.Handout
Choosing just one song by the sweet soul singing Delfonics, who recorded for Stan Watson’s Philly Groove label, is not an easy task. Thom Bell wrote this 1968 hit with William “Poogie” Hart. The late great producer-arranger told me in 2020 that credit should also have gone to Hart’s toddler son who heard the melody and started muttering gibberish that turned into the title.
Other contenders with parenthetical titles include “Ready or Not Here I Come (Can’t Hide From Love),” which the Fugees interpolated in “Ready Or Not,” from their 1996 album The Score, released on Conshohocken’s Ruffhouse Records. Just as tender and equally great is “Didn’t I (Blow Your Mind This Time),” which has a classic needle drop moment in a fabulous scene between Robert Forster and Pam Grier in Quentin Tarantino’s 1997 crime film Jackie Brown.
4
Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes, “If You Don’t Know Me By Now”
Sharon Paige with Harold Melvin (to her right) and the Blue Notes.Courtesy of Gamble Huff Entertainment
Teddy Pendergrass grew up in North Philadelphia and was ordained as a minister when he was 10 years old. He started off as a drummer, then took over lead vocals duties for Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes after the bandleader realized the extent of his talent.
“If You Don’t Know Me By Now,” the first single from the Blue Notes 1972 Philadelphia International debut album I Miss You, was originally offered to Labelle, Patti LaBelle’s early 1970s group with Nona Hendryx and Sarah Dash. For whatever reason, they passed on it and it fell to Melvin, a journeyman band leader with a new, super talented singer.
In Pendergrass’ hands, the song became the quintessential Sound of Philly power ballad. The strings soar, the horns carry the lover’s quarrel forward, and the singer roars; a soul man whose raw, raspy power has rarely been equalled.
Fans of the song include Bob Dylan, who included a strange chapter on it in his 2022 book The Philosophy of Modern Song. LaBelle has frequently performed it in concert, and British singer Mick Hucknall of Simply Red had a No. 1 hit with it in 1989.
Pendergrass leaned further into his lover man persona after leaving the Blue Notes in 1975, including treating women to white chocolate and lollipops at his “Ladies Only” concerts. Starting with his 1977 self-titled solo album, he released five consecutive million-selling albums for PIR, becoming the first artist ever to do so.
3
Meek Mill, “Dreams and Nightmares”
Meek Mill closes day 2 of the Roots Picnic 2025 while performing on the Fairmount Park Stage at the Mann Center on Sunday, June 1, 2025.Yong Kim / Staff Photographer
It’s a city of underdogs. Since Meek Mill dramatically introduced himself by opening his debut album of the same name with “Dreams and Nightmares” in 2012, the song’s status as the ultimate statement of Philly hip-hop’s can’t stop won’t stop pride and self-determination has only grown.
It’s such a brazen way to start an album, and a career. Though to be fair, Meek — who was born Robert Rihmeek Williams and raised in South and North Philly — was already a mixtape sensation and, as the song points out, had worked with Mariah Carey.
But for his official beginning as a recording artist, Meek began with a 3 minute 50 second manifesto that begins thoughtfully and then turns into a torrent of aggression, backed by a beat from producer Tone the Beat Bully. There's no chorus, no hook, no sampled sweetness. In a genre where “realness” and authenticity are prized, you couldn’t question Meek’s seriousness of purpose.
“I used to pray for times like this, to rhyme like this,” he starts off dreamily. “So I had to grind like that, to shine like this.” Along the way, he spent some time “on some locked up s—,” he raps, not knowing at the time that he had real legal troubles ahead.
In 2017, he was sentenced to two to four years in prison for violating his parole from an earlier gun charge, and was still in prison in February 2018 when the Eagles first used “Dreams and Nightmares” as a motivational anthem before winning a Super Bowl. It worked for the team again in 2025.
He was released on bail in April of that year and went straight via helicopter from the State Correctional Institution to the Wells Fargo Center for a Sixers playoff game. There, he rang a faux Liberty Bell and “Dreams and Nightmares” pumped up the building.
And perhaps the most dramatic “Dreams and Nightmares” scenario came later that year, when Meek headlined Jay-Z’s Made In America festival on the Ben Franklin Parkway. Returning to the city’s iconic stage as a free man, he declared himself “the king of the city.” Whenever “Dreams and Nightmares” plays and everyone in the room rhymed along in unison, it feels like he is.
2
The O’Jays, “Back Stabbers”
From left: Kenny Gamble, Leon Huff and Thom Bell. The songwriters and producers, known as 'The Mighty Three,' have their stories told in the documentary 'The Sound Of Philadelphia.'Courtesy of Philadelphia International Records
Among the O’Jays’ many Sound of Philadelphia classics, which one takes the prime position, or in this case, the second spot overall on this 76 Songs list?
“For The Love of Money”? No, sorry, that one is counted out due to The Apprentice theme song overexposure. (Though the 1973 Kenny Gamble, Leon Huff, and Anthony Jackson song’s assertion that “money is the root of all evil” seems as on point as ever these days.)
How about “Love Train?” No, for all of its locomotive power, it’s too Pollyanna-ish for these fractured times. Also: too many Coors Light commercials.
Instead, it’s a song that takes a darker view of human nature. “Back Stabbers,” the title cut from the first Philadelphia International album by the O’Jays. Its members hailed from Canton, Ohio, but became synonymous with the Philly Sound as Gamble and Huff realized Eddie Levert’s gruff vocalizing was perfect for the tough yet elegant music they were producing at PIR.
The song begins with Leon Huff’s piano being joined by Thom Bell’s shimmering string arrangement and gathers steam before it comes to a halt and Levert, Walter Williams, and William Power ask a musical question: “What they do?”
The answer is “smile in your face, all the time they want to take your place.” That dead-on assessment of the duplicity that makes the world go round was partly inspired by “Smiling Faces Sometimes,” the 1971 Motown hit by the Undisputed Truth that’s alluded to in a “Back Stabbers” lyric.
1
McFadden & Whitehead, “Ain’t No Stoppin’ Us Now”
Gene McFadden and John Whitehead when they performed on the Oprah Winfrey Show in 2002.Peter Tobia / Staff Photographer
Let’s finish up this list with a little positivity.
I didn’t plan this segue, but there’s no stopping it now. Gene McFadden and John Whitehead were house songwriters at Philly International, writing “Back Stabbers” together with Leon Huff, as well as Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes’ “Wake Up Everybody,” which was later covered by John Legend and the Roots.
As the 1970s wore on, however, the duo grew frustrated with working in the background and hoped to step in the limelight. They did so, and then some, with “Ain’t No Stoppin’ Us Now,” which Gamble suggested they give to the O’Jays. But McFadden and Whitehead chose to keep it for themselves and used it as the lead track to their self-titled 1979 solo album.
Good decision.
Before his death in 2004, Whitehead said that “if anything, the song was a declaration of independence from Gamble.” But “Ain’t No Stoppin’ Us Now,” which the duo cowrote with keyboard player Jerry Cohen, plays as something musically bigger than that; as a grand, joyous declaration to let “nothing, nothing stand in your way.”
As such it stands as a perfect distillation of Philly fighting spirit, an inspirational thumper that is the flip side of “Back Stabbers” in that it refuses to stand for negativity and instead, gears up for the good times.
“We won’t let nothing hold us back,” Whitehead sings on the song that became an anthem for the Sixers’ 1983 NBA championship run and Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign. “We’re gonna get ourselves together, we’re polishing up our act.”
So by the time Barbara Ingram, Carla Benson, and Evette Benton — the Sweethearts of Sigma — join in on to repeat the song's title and the promise that “we’re on the move,” there can be no doubt that indeed, nothing can stop us.
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In past years, the city’s budget process has followed a certain pattern for Mural Arts Philadelphia and other groups.
The mayor’s proposed budget lists city funding at one level; City Council and others advocate for modifications at a higher level; and the budget goes back to the mayor and is finalized with the higher allocation in place.
This year was different.
Philadelphia’s nationally acclaimed program that puts colorful murals in neighborhoods and provides jobs was hoping for a boost in city funding.
Instead, the budget ultimately agreed to by Mayor Cherelle L. Parker’s administration and City Council cut funding to Mural Arts — from $5.1 million in fiscal year 2026 to $3.7 million in 2027.
Likewise the Philadelphia Cultural Fund. The group — which awards hundreds of grants to arts groups throughout the neighborhoods — was looking for increased funding in the city’s newly approved $7.1 billion budget for the fiscal year starting July 1.
But the arts nonprofit, established by the city recently, learned that it will get substantially less — $3.5 million instead of the $5 million it received from the city for the fiscal year now ending.
As a result, both groups say they will have to make deep cuts to programs.
Philadelphia’s arts and culture sector had greeted the start of Parker’s term 2½ years ago with optimism for increased funding. Today, it is “alarmed” by the cuts to Mural Arts and the Cultural Fund, said Patricia Wilson Aden, president and CEO of the Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance.
“We always say that your budget tells a story, and I have to say that the cultural community is disappointed and frustrated with the story being told by this FY27 budget,” she said. “Cutting the budget of signature programs like Mural Arts by 26% or decreasing funding to the Philadelphia Cultural Fund, that’s going to have ramifications throughout the city.”
Parker was not available for comment, a spokesperson said.
Valerie V. Gay (left) chief cultural officer with the City’s Office of Arts, Culture and the Creative Economy, and finance director Rob Dubow (right) testify at a Philadelphia City Council hearing, Aug. 8, 2024 on the collapse of the University of the Arts.
Valerie V. Gay, the city’s chief cultural officer, said it was the city’s view that funding for the two groups had remained flat from 2026 to 2027, since the base allocation stayed the same and it was only the added amount that did not come through — though she allowed that “absolutely I can see how it can be perceived.”
A ripple effect
The resulting cuts at both groups promise to be substantial. The Cultural Fund will be forced to reduce the number of grants it had been expecting to distribute in the coming year, from 332 to 232. It has changed its eligibility requirements, which will eliminate grants to a pool of midsize organizations currently eligible.
“It’s going to be a ripple effect. People are going to feel it and communities are going to feel it,” said Philadelphia Cultural Fund executive director Gabriela Sanchez.
“An investment in the Philadelphia Cultural Fund is more than a budget line item,” Sanchez wrote in a statement distributed by the group. “Funding to PCF represents how the city values neighborhood theaters, cultural centers, museums, arts education programs, festivals, dance companies, community storytelling initiatives, music programs, and cultural traditions that bring Philadelphians together. These spaces are where young people discover their creativity, where seniors find connection, where communities celebrate their heritage, and where residents gather across lines of difference.”
Jane Golden (center right) speaks with press at the Wawa Welcome America media preview for the Philly Fair 250, outside the Please Touch Museum in West Philadelphia, June 18, 2026. Mural Arts held a ceremonial unveiling of a 10-story-high mural replica, originally titled ‘CityKids Speak On Liberty,’ and created by Keith Haring.
Mural Arts director Jane Golden declined to comment, but an initial assessment from the group obtained by The Inquirer says that “hundreds of residents in at least 15 Philadelphia communities will lose the opportunity to develop public art projects,” and that opportunities for paid work, job training, and mentorship through the Mural Arts Restorative Justice program will be reduced by 25%.
Mural Arts will also have to cut by 75% its program of restoring and preserving the city’s murals, “putting at risk community landmarks that took years and significant public investment to create,” the impact statement reads.
Of the program reductions at both groups, Gay said: “I am always sad that any cuts are made or that any organizations are unable to do the work they thought they were going to be able to do. That’s always a sad time for us, and I’m looking forward to when we are a fully funded sector.”
A city spokesperson was unable to provide a full list of groups that in past years had received higher allocations after advocacy from City Council and others, but this year did not.
What’s behind the cuts
Aden says arts and culture has seen some significant recent “wins” from city government. Among them is the advancement of a referendum that, if approved by the mayor and then by voters this fall, would enshrine the city’s office of arts and culture, called Creative Philadelphia, in the City Charter.
The city has approved $500,000 a year to develop and implement a cultural plan for Philadelphia that would document financial needs and could identify potential pathways to establishing funding.
The ‘Ruth E. Carter: Afrofuturism in Costume Design’ exhibition at the African American Museum in Philadelphia, Nov. 1, 2025.
Sometimes the city’s support is for regular operations, and other times it is for specific capital projects. In an unusually large commitment, the city has pledged $50 million to the African American Museum in Philadelphia for its relocation to the Benjamin Franklin Parkway.
The city is providing nearly $32.5 million to arts and culture in FY27, according to a list provided by Parker’s office. While that total includes small items that might seem mundane — paying utility bills at various facilities, for instance — it also shows multimillion-dollar allocations to the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Dell Music Center, and Philadelphia Zoo.
But the arts and culture sector often finds itself fighting for adequate funding in the annual budget process. Arts leaders and others say it has been standard practice in recent memory that funding is listed at one level in the mayor’s proposed budget and after City Council testimony in budget hearings ends up being higher.
This year, the mayor “could have funded [the arts] at a higher amount,” as she did last year, but did not do so, Councilmember Rue Landau said.
The cuts came after a budget that passed without a series of tax increases proposed by Parker, including a $1 tax on rideshare services, after failing to win support from City Council. After Council signaled it would reject Parker’s tax proposals, the administration would not agree to any last-minute line items for new funding requests from lawmakers.
Councilmember Isaiah Thomas, a consistent arts supporter who, like Landau, is an ex-officio Mural Arts board member, said that with the lack of new tax revenue and the city’s extra allocation of $48 million to cover the Philadelphia School District’s budget shortfall, the funding pie for other allocations got smaller.
“This budget year, a lot of attention and advocacy went toward schools,” Thomas said. The funding cuts to Mural Arts and the Cultural Fund were “extremely unfortunate,” he said, “and I wish we could have done something different.”
The need for ‘predictable, stable, reliable’ funding for the arts
While the city’s budget is now final, there is another potential window of opportunity for funding through a midyear budget transfer process in which the city might see expenditures in certain areas coming in lower than expected, and then transfer money from those categories to other areas.
Asked whether funds might be restored through a budget transfer to Mural Arts or the Cultural Fund, Gay said:
“I think anything is on the table, but I also think nothing is guaranteed.”
Patricia Wilson Aden, president and CEO of the Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance, at S. Broad Street and Walnut along the Avenue of the Arts, Feb. 15, 2023.
Any restoration of funds would happen after arts groups have already put cuts in place, and this kind of unpredictability “makes planning by these organizations very, very difficult,” Aden said.
“The practice of underfunding the arts and having Council and other entities have to go on an advocacy campaign to increase funding is illogical,” Landau said. “It is clear as day that we should be supporting the arts with additional funding every single year, so we don’t have to go through this and it won’t ever be a question mark for them.”
What is really needed, Aden said, is a dedicated arts fund in Philadelphia and the region.
“We’ve seen other regions benefit from this predictable, stable, reliable funding. And instead, here in Philadelphia, each year we have this conversation about increases and decreases and their impact. We are sometimes left to the will and whim of elected officials, and we would like to take the creative economy out of the political realm and put it solidly within our larger civic interest, so that it is stable and has the investment that is required to reach its full potential.”
Staff writer Anna Orso contributed to this article.
In tricorn hats and tail coats, their locs, microbraids, and wavy tresses gathered into 18th-century low ponytails, 27 Philadelphia-area high school students transformed into America’s Founding Fathers on Wednesday evening at the Philadelphia High School for Creative and Performing Arts.
The young thespians debated and deliberated the benefits of forming a sovereign nation. Their well-practiced Southern accents and New England inflections echoed in the full auditorium.
In 2½ hours, Massachusetts congressman John Adams (played by Jackson Preisser), Ben Franklin (Jayden Duvene), and Thomas Jefferson (Maxwell Henderson) made the case for liberty, overcoming the petty aristocratic concerns of Pennsylvania delegate John Dickinson (Greg Rist).
Former Mayor Ed Rendell meets cast members (L-R) Abigail Adams (played by Chloe Chau), John Dickinson (played by Greg Rist) and Ben Franklin (played by Jayden Duvene) during opening night of 1776: The Musical at the Philadelphia High School for Creative and Performing Arts on Wednesday, June 24, 2026.
On a set that looked remarkably like Independence Hall, the students staged the Tony Award-winning 1969 Broadway musical1776 and argued for and against liberty with witty songs and sophisticated dialogue.
The reenactment of the signing of the Declaration of Independence was everything Ed Rendell, the elder statesman and the brain behind the production, wanted it to be.
“It’s been my dream for quite some time to see this production happen,” Rendell said to The Inquirer, his voice a raspy whisper, worn and weary from Parkinson’s disease. Sitting in his wheelchair at the red, white, and blue step and repeat, Rendell smiled as CAPA’s lobby was turned into a dining room for dignitaries hours before the play began.
“In honor of America’s 250th birthday, we wanted to use 1776 to teach high school students the sacrifices and compromises it took to form this great nation,” he said.
Rendell’s love for 1776 is rooted to the night in 1969 when he watched the colonial drama unfold on Broadway, starring William Daniels as John Adams, Ken Howard as Thomas Jefferson, and Howard da Silva as Benjamin Franklin. Daniels, Howard, and da Silva starred in the 1971 Oscar-nominated film of the same name.
“I loved it,” Rendell said, whose favorite ballads from the play are Franklin, Adams, and Jefferson’s quirky performance of “The Egg,” in which the forefathers humorously choose the bald eagle as America’s national bird. (That didn’t really happen during the Second Continental Congress, but it’s a nice touch.)
Another of Rendell’s favorite songs is “Is Anybody There?,” a melancholy number during which Adams asks himself if his dedication to the cause of independence is worth it.
“It struck the right chord, giving all the facts about how we came to our freedom, our independence,” Rendell said. “When I became mayor, I went back and studied it and began to think of it as an important civics lesson. There were so many things I didn’t even know.”
A former president, a mayor, a speaker walk into a play
The 1776 opening night saw the attendance of a who’s who in Philadelphia politics, business, and civics.
Former President Joe Biden was in the house on the opening night of Rendell’s theatrical milestone. After he was presented with a copy of the declaration signed by the cast, the former president delivered a nine-minute speech about the importance of teaching American history in present-day America, although he did not mention President Donald Trump by name.
“What I can tell you is that from the moment the Founding Fathers signed the Declaration of Independence, we have been in a consistent battle for the soul of the nation,” Biden said as guests prepared to dig into barbecued chicken, brisket, and ribs, Rendell’s favorite.
Former President Joe Biden displays a signed poster from the cast as former Mayor Ed Rendell looks on during the opening night celebration of 1776: The Musical at the Philadelphia High School for Creative and Performing Arts on Wednesday, June 24, 2026.
“Even when there is darkness,” Biden said, “we’ve summoned our angels and crawled back from the brink. We are trying to do that now.”
Mayor Cherelle L. Parker, Pennsylvania House Speaker Joanna McClinton (D., Philadelphia), and State Rep. Joe Ciresi (D., Montgomery) were also in attendance. Philadelphia School Superintendent Tony B. Watlington Sr.; Temple University president John Fry; and David L. Cohen, the former senior executive vice president to Comcast and U.S. ambassador to Canada, were on hand, too.
“When Mr. Rendell calls, people come out,” said Adrian R. King, a partner at Philadelphia-based law firm Ballard Spahr and a former Rendell staffer.
Their attendance reflected their respect for Rendell, a former governor of Pennsylvania and mayor of Philadelphia who, in his political heyday in the 1990s, led the efforts to reimagine South Broad Street as the now-bustling Avenue of the Arts. CAPA’s 1997 opening was a part of that plan.
John Adams (played by Jackson Preisser, middle) and John Dickinson (played by Greg Rist, right) are seperated during a scene from the opening night of 1776: The Musical at the Philadelphia High School for Creative and Performing Arts on Wednesday, June 24, 2026.
Rendell’s baby
Rendell has dreamed of this production for years. He began working on it in earnest last year, bringing on veteran Philadelphia arts administrator Karen Corbin to executive produce. Phillip Sean Brown, director of theater at Bryn Mawr’s Shipley School, was roped in to direct.
“The governor had very specific ideas of what he wanted,” Brown said. “He wanted to show the history of our country, show the drama of the birth of a nation, and have the students learn everything they could about the craft of theater.”
The first order of business was securing the rights to the late composer Sherman Edwards’ script and music. That will cost about $45,000 by the end of the run, Corbin said.
Casting began in February and auditions began in March. Forty actors from eight area high schools were picked for the multicultural, gender-fluid rotating cast, giving the revival of the 57-year-old production Hamilton vibes.
In addition, Brown said, more than 30 students were hired as musicians and production crew.
Cast members posed with guests before opening night of 1776: The Musical at the Philadelphia High School for Creative and Performing Arts on Wednesday, June 24, 2026.
“They worked with professionals in theater lighting, costume, sound, and props,” Brown said.
Students were paid $150 a week during rehearsal weeks, and will make $300 a week through the eight-week performance. The entire production cost $850,000 including a $150,000 grant from the state.
There will be 50 shows through Aug. 15 at CAPA. Actors will also perform vignettes of the musical throughout Philadelphia’s historic district, including Carpenters Hall.
‘All good things take compromise’
Students’ exposure to the arts and history has been priceless.
“This experience represents striving forward — as an actor with my cast,“ said Mason Daly, a CAPA graduating senior whose biting Southern accent for South Carolina congressman and segregationist Edward Rutledge was chilling.
Daly’s role as Rutledge is particularly eye-opening. 1776 tells us that Jefferson’s original draft of the declaration included a clause abolishing slavery in America. Rutledge, however, would support America only if that part of the declaration were struck.
Jefferson laments to Franklin, saying, “Mark me, Franklin … if we give in on this issue, posterity will never forgive us.” But he does give in.
“Playing him, I learned to value the nuances of the perspectives of even those we disagree with,” Daly said.
“It’s about his personal compromises to get to the yea vote that allowed independence to go forward. That dialogue, that discussion, that back-and-forth between him and the various colonial representatives is the basis of our democracy and government.”
Former Mayor Ed Rendell during opening night of 1776: The Musical at the Philadelphia High School for Creative and Performing Arts on Wednesday, June 24, 2026.
The actors’ parents bubbled with excitement.
“My child is really being taken seriously as an actor in this production,” said Justina Barrett, chief learning and engagement officer at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, and mother to Sage Wentz, who played Col. Thomas McKean of Delaware. “This whole play is about the messy business of making the United States. It was hard. These guys weren’t nice. It wasn’t pretty. In many ways, we are divided then as we are now.”
Although difficult, this idea of forming a new nation through compromise is what Rendell hopes is the ultimate lesson for all involved.
“We can’t get anything done without compromise,” Rendell said. “We have to get back to a government that is working toward the good of the government. The Civil Rights Act took compromise. Women’s rights took compromise. All good things take compromise.”
“1776″ will be performed at CAPA, 901 S. Broad St., through Aug. 15. Tickets start at $11. For more information, go to the Celebrating 1776! website.
NEW YORK — David Clayton-Thomas, the lead singer of Blood, Sweat & Tears, whose husky, high-strung tenor on “Spinning Wheel,” “And When I Die,” and other hits helped make the so-called “brass rock” band among the most popular acts of the late 1960s, has died at age 84.
Spokesperson Eric Alper said that Mr. Clayton-Thomas died “peacefully” Wednesday at St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto. Alper did not cite a specific cause.
Mr. Clayton-Thomas was a onetime street fighter and petty thief from Canada who briefly became a rock superstar, the front man of a nine-member group that sold millions of records and won two Grammys for Blood, Sweat & Tears, which beat out the Beatles’Abbey Road for best album of 1969. Calling out amid a jazzy parade of horns, keyboards, and percussion, Mr. Clayton-Thomas’ urgent shout was a signature voice of the era, preaching love on the Motown cover “You’ve Made Me So Very Happy,” a lasting legacy on Laura Nyro’s “And When I Die,” and a cool head on his own “Spinning Wheel.” Meanwhile, Blood, Sweat & Tears helped inspire a wave of horn-led bands, among them Chicago, the Electric Flag, and Ten Wheel Drive.
“A lot of the guys [in Blood, Sweat & Tears] would play a Broadway show matinee, then go up to Harlem and play Latin music or R&B and funk at night, or come down to the Village and play pure jazz the next night,” Mr. Clayton-Thomas told bestclassicbands.com in 2023. “I was just a blues player: give me three chords and I’ve got a song.”
At its peak, Blood, Sweat & Tears’ appeal was so broad it helped lead to the band’s downfall.
Hip enough to perform at the 1969 Woodstock festival, where they were among the highest paid acts, they also were known enough to the establishment to tour Eastern Europe the following year on behalf of the State Department. When Mr. Clayton-Thomas and other band members denounced the Communist regimes on the other side of the Cold War, Rolling Stone’s David Felton wrote that “the State Department got its money worth.” Yippies would turn up at a 1970 Blood, Sweat & Tears show at Madison Square Garden, carrying obscene banners outside and dumping manure by the front gate.
The band had practical reasons for going along with the government: Mr. Clayton-Thomas, who had allegedly wielded a gun at his girlfriend, had been denied a green card and faced deportation. But after topping the charts in 1970 with the album Blood, Sweat & Tears 3, their appeal soon faded. A burned out Mr. Clayton-Thomas left the group in 1972, and neither he nor the remaining musicians ever regained their old stature. Blood, Sweat & Tears would continue recording over the next few years, and even briefly reunited with Mr. Clayton-Thomas, who went on to release more than a dozen solo albums and tour on his own for decades.
Mr. Clayton-Thomas was inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame in 1996. “Spinning Wheel,” covered by everyone from James Brown to TV star Barbara Eden, was voted into the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame a decade later.
Mr. Clayton-Thomas is survived by his daughters, Ashleigh Clayton-Thomas and Christine Graham.
Up from the streets
Born David Henry Thomsett in Surrey, England, and raised near Toronto and Ottawa, he was the son of a Canadian World War II veteran and of a pianist-entertainer who helped inspire her son’s interest in music. Thomsett was lucky to have the chance. He fought violently with his father, was living in the streets by his mid-teens and by age 20 was serving time in a reformatory for vagrancy, assault and other crimes.
An old guitar, left behind by a fellow inmate, changed his life. He taught himself to play and began spending extensive time in the early 1960s around Toronto’s Yonge Street music “strip,” where peers included the American rockabilly star Ronnie Hawkins, a mentor to Robbie Robertson and other future members of the Band and a guide for Thomsett early in his career.
Anxious to reinvent himself, he changed his last name to Clayton-Thomas while leading his own groups. In the mid-60s, he released such albums as Sings Like It Is and had a hit single with the anti-war rocker “Brainwashed.” He would also befriend a rising star, Joni Mitchell, whose childlike “Circle Game” helped inspire “Spinning Wheel,” and the venerable John Lee Hooker, who would indirectly contribute to Mr. Clayton-Thomas’ breakthrough in the U.S.
America beckons
Hooker had encouraged Mr. Clayton-Thomas to move to New York, where the American bluesman had an engagement at the Cafe Au Go Go in Greenwich Village. When Hooker unexpectedly departed for a tour of Europe, club owner Howard Solomon needed a replacement and recruited Mr. Clayton-Thomas.
“So I played him a couple songs on the guitar,” Mr. Clayton-Thomas told bestclassicbands.com. “He said, ‘Do you have a band?’ I said, ‘Sure,’ and went out into Greenwich Village looking for anybody carrying a guitar case or even looking like a musician, and we put together a little band and we opened there that night. We ended up staying there for several months.”
Around the same time, session man-producer Al Kooper was looking to a form jazz-rock group and was joined by such musicians as guitarist Steve Katz, drummer Bobby Colomby, and horn players Randy Brecker and Jerry Weiss. They called themselves Blood, Sweat & Tears, releasing the debut album Child Is Father to the Man early in 1968. Although praised by Rolling Stone publisher Jann Wenner as “a fine, exemplary group,” members were torn between those allied with Kooper and those who thought his vocals too weak to attract a substantial audience.
By the end of the year, Kooper and others had departed, and the band was seeking a new singer. After Judy Collins saw Mr. Clayton-Thomas perform, she recommended him to Colomby.
“I got home and just a couple of days later, Bobby Colomby called me up and said, ‘Hey, Kooper’s gone. We got four guys left out of the nine. And we still got a record contract with Columbia. Do you want to come down and try out for the band?”’ Mr. Clayton-Thomas told bestclassicbands.com. ”I said, ‘You’re damn right.’ I knew [bassist] Jim Fielder real well and I knew they were superb musicians. So I was on the next plane. We had a rehearsal that afternoon, an audition, and it was instant magic. We just knew right off the bat.”
Summer officially arrived this week, and Philly is wasting no time. World Cup matches return to Lincoln Financial Field, festivals are filling parks across the city, and outdoor concerts are kicking into high gear. If you’ve been waiting for the season to feel like summer, this is the weekend.
Also in this week’s edition:
Fiesta at LOVE Park: Stop by one of the largest Latino arts and culture celebrations in Philadelphia.
Hershey’s Soccerland at Dilworth Park: Chocolate, soccer, and family activities at City Hall. What more can you ask for?
Noah Kahan at CBP: The folk-pop, singer-songwriter takes over Citizens Bank Park for “The Great Divide” tour.
FIFA World Cup 26: Curaçao vs. Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana vs. Croatia
Jimmy Coilliot of Lille, France cheers after France took a 1-0 lead in the first half of the France vs. Iraq 2026 FIFA World Cup Group 1 soccer match at Philadelphia Stadium on Monday, June 22, 2026.
The Curaçao national team, among the most inspiring underdogs at the 2026 FIFA World Cup, is taking on Côte d’Ivoire on Thursday at Lincoln Financial Field.
It will be a hotly contested matchup between the two Group E teams. After a loss to Germany last week, Côte d’Ivoire is looking to bounce back in hopes of landing the No. 1 spot in their group.
Curaçao, nicknamed The Blue Wave, is looking to secure the team’s first win not only in this year’s tournament, but in World Cup history.
On Saturday, the fierce competitions continue. Croatia and Ghana will go head to head in what could be an upset matchup.
🕺🏽Shake your tambourine: Philly-born rapper, TV host, author, and actor Eve is coming home for a one-night concert at the at the Dell Music Center. The performance, part of WaWa Welcome America events, is also a celebration of Black Music Month. The event will conclude with a firework display.
🍫 A sweet time kicking it at City Hall: Hershey’s Soccerland at Dilworth Park is a three-day pop-up where soccer, family, and chocolate collide. Visitors can enjoy fun activities, mini activations, and interactive games. Plus, they can get their hands on a limited edition Christian Pulisic Hershey milk chocolate bar.
🧙🏽♂️ The Wizard is here: The Philadelphia Orchestra will bring the iconic film The Wizard of Oz to life. While the film plays on screen, the orchestra will perform the movie’s score, giving long-time fans of the film a viewing experience unlike anything they’ve had before.
💃🏽 Kid-friendly cabaret: Kidchella, a free outdoor music event at Smith Memorial Playground, is delivering performances spanning Mexican son jarocho fusion, Brazilian percussion, Afrocentric R&B and dance, and family-style cabaret. The night will be capped off with fireworks.
📅 My calendar picks this week: North Broad Music & Morsels, Philly Fairy Festival, Culture Fest at Liberty Point, Harrowgate Summerfest, Germantown Art & Sound
Concilio’s Annual Hispanic Fiesta at LOVE Park
FILE: A skateboarder “jumps the LOVE Gap” in LOVE Park November 8, 2015.
Concilio’s Hispanic Fiesta, one of Philly’s largest celebrations of Latino arts, culture, community, and tradition is back at LOVE Park this Saturday.
The annual festival is headlined by Latin Grammy Award-winning singer Olga Tañón, known for hits like “Es Mentiroso” and “Muchacho Malo.”
Her performance will cap off a full day of live music, dance performances, food vendors offering authentic Hispanic cuisine, cultural exhibits, and interactive games and family-friendly activities.
Noah Kahan performs during the Pre-Grammy Gala on Saturday, Feb. 3, 2024, at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif. (Photo by Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP)
🎸 The Great Divide at CBP:Noah Kahan is up at bat at Citizens Bank Park. The pop-folk superstar, known for hits like “Stick Season,” is heading to CBP for his “The Great Divide” tour. Openers include Gigi Perez and Annabelle Dinda.
🎉 Celebrations at the Navy Yard: Who says the Navy Yard is just all industrial boats and cargo? Head to the Navy Yard for an afternoon of live music, delicious food, local art and craft vendors, and other fun activities for visitors of all ages.
🎡 Go back in time:The Lits Building will be the host of Revisit 1876, a six-month exhibition that showcases the stories, sights, and extravagance of the first World’s Fair in North America. The country’s first typewriter, telephone, popcorn, and seltzer will be among the items displayed at the event, which celebrates the nation’s centennial.
🎨 Restorative justice at the Barnes: The Barnes Foundation’s new exhibition, Just Us, features original artwork crafted by artists at State Correctional Institution — Phoenix, and members of Mural Arts Philadelphia’s Rec Crew — a 24-week job readiness and life skills program for young adults. The exhibition kicks off this Friday and runs through Aug. 24.
Staffer picks
Here’s a list of the best concerts happening this week.
D.C. rapper Wale performs a homecoming show Nov. 15 at the Theater at MGM National Harbor in Maryland. MUST CREDIT: Shaughn Cooper
🎤 Thursday: Buffalo rapper Conway the Machine, fresh off his 2025 album You Can’t Kill God With Bullets, is bringing the heat to the Foundry on Thursday night.
🎸 Friday: The Strokes, Thundercat, and Hamilton Leithauser join hands for a star-studded performance at the TD Pavilion at the Mann Center.
🎤 Saturday:Wale, who quietly dropped one of rap’s best and most underappreciated bodies of work, is headlining at The Fillmore Philly with fellow emcee and St. Louis native Smino.
🎺 Sunday: For a Harlem-themed jazz party at South Restaurant & Jazz Club, Brooklyn-born, Harlem-based vocalist and songwriter Allan Harris will be headlining the night on Sunday.
❓Pop quiz
When did the Lit Brothers building first open?
a) 1871
b) 1891
c) 1903
d) 1769
Ask Earl anything
I’m starting something new for the newsletter, and I want your participation.
Many of you have questions about each week’s listings, and others about Philly’s arts, culture, and entertainment scene.
I have you covered. Have a question? Email me for a chance to have it answered in an upcoming newsletter.
That’s it for this week’s edition. At the start of the summer, there’s always plenty to do. But with the FIFA World Cup in full swing, and other events centered on the semiquincentennial celebration, there’s far more to explore than usual. Make sure to work these into your weekend plans.
For nine years, every week, writer Anndee Hochman attempted to answer one question.
What does the road to parenthood look like for people who don’t follow the family “norm”?
For her Inquirer column “The Parent Trip,” she profiled different Philadelphia-area families with children, all with atypical experiences creating their family.
This included queer parents, single parents, interracial parents, interfaith parents, and so on. Hochman spoke to parents who adopted children, conceived them through IVF, got pregnant unexpectedly, and more.
Anyone who had a story around parenthood with a less talked-about aspect found themselves in Hochman’s column. Forty-two of 468 of those profiles have now been compiled into a new book, Parent Trip: Unexpected Roads to Form a Family, published by Temple University Press.
Hochman, who is queer, started writing about family life in 1990, when she was living in Portland, Ore. After her straight housemates got engaged, she wrote an essay for the now-shuttered LGBTQ publication Just Out, detailing her feelings on the discrepancies between how straight and queer relationships are perceived socially.
The Eighth Mountain Press publisher Ruth Gundle reached out to Hochman, asking if she had more to say on the subject. As it turned out, she had a whole book’s worth. Her first book, Everyday Acts and Small Subversions: Women Reinventing Family, Community and Home, released on Eighth Mountain in 1994.
Anndee Hochman’s “Parent Trip: Unexpected Roads to Form a Family” is a collection of stories from her original column.
By 1999, Hochman had moved to Philadelphia and began freelancing for The Inquirer, still writing about family. In 2014, former Inquirer features editor Cathy Rubin asked her if she’d be interested in writing a weekly feature on people becoming parents.
That’s how “The Parent Trip,” the column, was born. Hochman began by reaching out to midwives and OB/GYN offices to see if any of their clients would be willing to participate. The column asked readers to submit their stories.
“Becoming a parent and forming a family felt like a messier version of the Wedding column, and that’s exactly what we got,” said Rubin, referring to the column on marital stories that “Parent Trip” replaced. “It was beyond my wildest dreams to witness and experience all of the different ways that families formed and the challenges that people had.”
Hochman, whose daughter with her long-term partner, Elissa, was born in 2001, was able to use her own experience as a parent to inform the column.
“When I was interviewing families who didn’t fit the norm and I shared my own family configuration with them,” she said, “I felt like I could feel their shoulders relax a little bit, particularly with the queer families.”
“The Parent Trip” began nine months before marriage equality for same-sex couples was legalized and concluded just over a year after Roe v. Wade was overturned, reversing a half-century of legalized abortion.
Hochman makes clear with this book that families will always exist beyond the heteronormative structures society deems “normal.”
The book is categorized into nine chapters, each carrying three to seven profiles. Through these, Hochman covers topics such as infertility, adoption, age gaps in relationships, religious differences, interracial marriages, and other circumstances that make families less “normal” per social mores.
“I wanted the 42 [profiles] that ended up in the book to reflect the same diversity and span as the 468 that comprised nine years worth of columns,” Hochman said. “You will not find a section of stories all about single parents, or a section all about queer parents. I was more interested in the themes that echoed across all kinds of families.”
Through writing this column, Hochman says she learned about situations she never experienced in becoming a parent, including adoption and how common miscarriages are.
A phrase repeated by many of the parents she interviewed was “you just don’t know what’s going to happen.” Whether that be when you try to adopt, conceive, when you’re in the delivery room, once the baby is home, and once they’re 2, 6, or 25, she said.
“There is no one right or normative way to be a family,” Hochman said. “I hope people come away with an expanded sense of what a family can look like and how children can be welcomed into one’s life.”
“Parent Trip: Unexpected Roads to Form a Family” by Anndee Hochman is now available all over the country. $20.
We take paper for granted now. But in the late 1600s, when Pennsylvania’s founder William Penn recruited German papermaker and preacher William Rittenhouse to manufacture the writing parchment in the New World, paper was a luxury.
England’s King William III made it difficult for his subjects — at home and in the Americas — to have it. Like many monarchs of his day, he believed it was the Crown’s duty to record history.
The English imported paper from other European countries. So, to make matters worse, colonists who managed to appeal to the king for paper were double and triple taxed. They got fed up and went about securing their own paper to document the goings on in the government, inform citizens, record history, and ultimately plan a revolution.
Artist Ava Haitz’s No. 1 honors the country’s first paper mill, celebrating the invention and craftsmanship that made widespread written communication possible.
In 1690, Rittenhouse partnered with Philadelphia’s first printer, William Bradford, to build America’s first paper mill, situated in northwest Philadelphia and powered by the Monoshone Creek, a tributary of the Schuylkill.
The paper mill will be celebrated this Saturday at Historic RittenhouseTown, part of a series of weekly “Firstival” celebrations. Firstivals are the Philadelphia Historic District’s yearlong birthday nod to places and events with Philadelphia roots. The day parties are a hallmark of this year’s Semiquincentennial fetes.
At the Rittenhouse mill, paper was made from linen rags fashioned from flax grown in Germantown, that were broken down and shaped into sheets. The mill grew quickly as Rittenhouse, America’s first Mennonite bishop, provided paper for Bibles and Quaker and Mennonite texts in German.
An aerial view of RittenhouseTown circa 1840-1860. The site eventually grew to more than 200 acres.
Rittenhouse’s first paper mill was destroyed by a flood, said Alexander Jones, preservation and education manager at Historic RittenhouseTown.
Then “Rittenhouse rebuilds and he buys out his partner,” Jones said. “The paper mill becomes his sole enterprise. Instead of hiring workers, he recruits his family and it becomes a giant company town. There is a church, a blacksmith, stone houses, a bake house, and more than 40 buildings with five or six of them under what is now Lincoln Drive.”
RittenhouseTown’s paper mill was the only source of paper in America for more than 40 years, Jones said. It would grow to more than 200 acres.
David Rittenhouse — Rittenhouse’s great-grandson and the astrologer, clockmaker, and first director of the U.S. Mint after whom Rittenhouse Square is named — was born in his family’s RittenhouseTown homestead in 1732.
The town thrived for more than a century.
By the mid-1800s, the paper mill began to slow down as dyes from textile and carpet manufacturers and chemicals from blacksmithing started to pollute the Schuylkill. The filthy water made it nearly impossible to produce good quality paper at the mill.
The Fairmount Park Commission began acquiring parts of RittenhouseTown through a series of purchases and donations from 1890 to 1917. The city demolished many of the town’s buildings, including a barn that, Jones said, was razed and rebuilt within a year.
RittenhouseTown’s homestead and bakehouse. The first permanent home for the Rittenhouse family and birthplace of David Rittenhouse, great-grandson of William Rittenhouse for whom Center City’s Rittenhouse Square is named.
By that time, however, the Rittenhouse family had spread throughout the Philadelphia region from Center City to Blue Bell, Jones said.
Today, RittenhouseTown spans 20 acres nestled in Fairmount Park right behind Lincoln Drive. Six of the original buildings remain, serving as a reminder that RittenhouseTown was the first building block of American industry.
“The paper mill really got the ball rolling for Philadelphia,” Jones said. “And from that first came so many other American firsts in Philadelphia: the first Mennonite bishop, the first company town, and America’s first director of the U.S. Mint.”
This week’s Firstival is Saturday, June 27, 11 a.m.-1 p.m., at Historic RittenhouseTown, 208 Lincoln Drive.
No city does history quite like Philadelphia — and it’s all on full display this summer for the nation’s 250th. From museums and historic houses to outdoor experiences and more, here are some must-dos over the coming days, weeks, and months.
“Rushmore,” a 2016 painting by Tom Judd, is part of the “Arc of Promise” exhibit at the Woodmere Museum.
‘Arc of Promise’
Woodmere Museum
Examine how Philadelphia artists have imagined America — from earlier perspectives to modern day — in paintings, sculptures, and other media. Inspired by local artist Jerry Pinkney (1939-2021), whose “arc of promise” concept was influenced by America’s painful histories of slavery, displacement, and injustice, while holding onto the belief that renewal is still attainable.
Weitzman National Museum of American Jewish History
Explore events surrounding Nov. 16, 1776, the day the Dutch governor of St. Eustatius welcomed a ship flying the new American flag into the harbor — making the first recognition of the new nation by a foreign entity. A critical thruway for commerce between Europe and North America, the island’s Dutch leaders offered Jews a relatively high level of religious tolerance. Highlights include a 1761 Hanukkah lamp.
View works by artist Sky Hopinka featuring personal perspectives of Indigenous homelands and landscapes. In recognition of the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, these works of art thoughtfully explore and interrogate the American experience and its histories.
A fedora owned by Franklin Delano Roosevelt is part of the “Governing the Nation” exhibit at the National Constitution Center.
‘Governing the Nation’
National Constitution Center
Explore how the American system of government functions through immersive media, dynamic projections, and 3D models of the U.S. Capitol, the White House, and the U.S. Supreme Court. View a pamphlet written by Alexander Hamilton on the constitutionality of the National Bank, as well as Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s fedora.
A view of “Proving Ground: The First 250 Years of the American Experiment,” at Highmark Mann Satell Centennial Wall East.
‘Proving Ground: The First 250 Years of the American Experiment’
Highmark Mann Center for the Performing Arts
Enjoy an outdoor film experience with the 4,500-square-foot immersive LED canvas at the entrance of Highmark Mann on its new Satell Centennial Wall East. This massive storytelling canvas features cinematic visuals, motion design, music, and historical imagery that immerse visitors in Philadelphia’s role in shaping the American story.
‘Revolutionary Family: The Biddles and American Independence’
Andalusia Historic House
Explore historical art and documents based on the Biddles, one of America’s most prominent colonial families. Discover what happened at the Andalusia site during the time of the American Revolution, including the military activity that surrounded the area, and view the beautiful painted portrait miniatures of Clement and Rebekah Biddle.
‘Freedom Through Faith: Judaism at Eastern State and Beyond’
Eastern State Penitentiary
Discover how religious freedom, one of the “unalienable rights” stated in the Declaration of Independence, was strongly represented and practiced in America’s first penitentiary, especially by its Jewish inhabitants. A restored synagogue is a central feature of the exhibit and is the first synagogue in a U.S. prison.
2027 Fairmount Ave., opening July 2 for permanent display, easternstate.org
‘Creating a City of Medicine’
Mütter Museum
Explore 250 years of Philadelphia’s impact on health and healing in the U.S., including medical education, technological innovation, and community-based healing practices. Featuring well-recognized Philadelphia leaders as well as lesser-known figures, the exhibit will educate visitors on the vital role Philadelphia played in American medicine and medical education.
Barbara Bates Center for the Study of the History of Nursing at the University of Pennsylvania
In celebration of America 250 at Penn, this exhibit showcases rare materials and reproductions surrounding Revolutionary-era nursing. Explore the influence of Black and Indigenous people on the profession, and the influences of African healing and Indigenous practices on early American medicine.
Explore the history of trade between the U.S. and China, as it relates to the birth of the United States and the long history of trade between them. View a bowl purchased by a Philadelphia merchant for George and Martha Washington, decorated with an unbroken circle and chains representing the strength of the new nation.
This exhibit traces the American Declaration of Independence’s global influence across 250 years, including political and social change. Featuring 120-plus artifacts from almost 20 nations, it explores how leaders from the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to Gandhi used the declaration’s words as inspiration to inspire political revolutions and civil rights movements worldwide.
Located next door to Independence Hall, this new exhibition shows that the declaration was a process, and continues to evolve and shape the nation. This exhibit displays 19 rare early printings of the declaration — including one handwritten by Thomas Jefferson, and a copy from July 4, 1776.
View 140 rare, original materials tracing how American colonists transformed from loyal British subjects to revolutionaries. Highlights include a letter written by John Adams the day after the adoption of the Declaration of Independence, praising a Massachusetts woman as a “historiographer” of the revolution, and view early drafts of the Constitution.
Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and Philadelphia Museum of Art
Two of Philadelphia’s premier institutions have united for this landmark exhibition. At PAFA, works made from the late 18th century to modern day showcase scenes of westward expansion and the rise of industry. At PMA, view American art from 1700 to 1960, identifying global connections that inspired artistic and technological innovation. Featuring more than 1,000 works — including pieces from the private Middleton Family Collection, and by Georgia O’Keeffe and Andy Warhol.
PAFA, 118-128 N. Broad St., now through Sept. 5, 2027; PMA, 2600 Benjamin Franklin Parkway, now through July 5, 2027; anationofartists.org
‘America Today: Voices in Contemporary Print’
The Print Center
Explore the current state of democracy through contemporary printmaking from 38 artists. This free exhibition was inspired by the New Deal of the 1930s and 1940s, when printmaking was used for political commentary. View works from generations of artists who use printmaking as an art form to explore and express the issues we face today.
The Pennsylvania Hospital Museum, which opened in May, transforms the historic Pine Building of America’s first chartered hospital, founded by Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Bond in 1751, into a public museum. Discover breakthroughs in brain health, and trace medicine from herbal healing teas to one of the most groundbreaking medical innovations: CRISPR gene editing.
Connect today’s Philadelphia to 1876, when Philadelphia made history as the first city in North America to host the World’s Fair. At this free exhibit, explore that period and see how far technology has taken us. Use your cell phones to capture a replica of Alexander Graham Bell’s first telephone.
Part of “The Doan Gang: Outlaws of the Revolution” exhibit at the Mercer Museum.
‘The Doan Gang: Outlaws of the Revolution’
Mercer Museum
Explore your rebellious side with these known enemies of the Founding Fathers, the Doan Gang, who were loyal to British rule in the colonies. This exhibit is from the perspective of Loyalists, who opposed American independence. Discover the untold stories that combine espionage, legendary robberies, and mythical lost treasure.
View powerful works by artists that invite viewers to immerse themselves in the memories, dreams, and histories of Black Americans from the past and present. Reflect on how Americans of color have shaped identities and created spaces of resistance, joy, and resilience in the face of systemic oppression. Featured artists include Philadelphia-based David Hartt and Tourmaline.
This summer, the Delaware River Waterfront transforms into a free, outdoor gallery called “Where Freedom Flows.” Highlights include “Let Freedom Ring” by Paul Ramírez Jonas — where visitors can strike a 600-pound bell to sound the final note of “My Country, ’Tis of Thee,” connecting Philadelphia’s historic waterfront to the nation’s evolving story of freedom.
Set your sights on this beautiful community-driven artwork installation by GrioXArts — artists Duwenavue Santé Johnson and Kara Mshinda. The textile centerpiece is a reimagined American flag composed of hand-embroidered bandannas created during a previous public workshop. It reflects personal and cultural narratives of BIPOC voices into Philadelphia’s evolving story and history.
‘At Liberty: Life in the City of Brotherly Love During the Early Republic’
Arthur Ross Gallery at the University of Pennsylvania
Explore fine art during our forefathers’ time with holdings from the University of Pennsylvania, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, the Winterthur Museum, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Curated by Gwendolyn DuBois Shaw, it features paintings, sculptures, and watercolor drawings of notable figures, including Benjamin Franklin.
A portrait by Tom McKinney is part of the “From Invisible to Invincible” exhibit at the Historic Strawberry Mansion.
‘From Invisible to Invincible: Honoring the Art of Color’
Historic Strawberry Mansion
This exhibit recognizes both the 250th anniversary of the founding of America and the 100th anniversary of the Committee of 1926, a women-led organization formed during the 1926 Sesquicentennial International Exposition, and dedicated to preserving the history and heritage of this mansion. It will showcase artists who did not get a fair opportunity to shine in the original 1926 exposition due to systemic inequities.
