A Love Letter to New York (in Words and Music)

I didn’t fall for New York because of jazz or Broadway or old Hollywood musicals (even though those all make sense). No, my obsession started with books.

(I promise this isn’t going to read like a book report)

Back when I was a bookworm kid trudging through upstate New York winters in hand-me-down boots and a cringy practical coat (think boring, dreary color, no cute embellishments), I devoured stories that made the city feel like more than a place. It was a living, restless, temperamental, glittering creature. Bigger than the people who filled its streets.

It was F. Scott Fitzgerald’s who first swept me into the magic. I read two of his books so often that I kept them near my pillow, never bothering to put them back in the bookcase. Zelda jumped into park fountains and on tables at the Waldorf! Scott and Zelda blocked elevators at the Plaza with furniture just to keep them on their floor! These were my kind of people: dramatic, romantic, and completely unwilling to play it safe. And I was sure Zelda wore a much more stylish winter coat than I.

Later came Dorothy Parker, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and Truman Capote, turning New York into a stage for wild cocktail parties, razor-sharp witticisms, and late-night Staten Island ferry rides that lasted until sunrise. From my small-town vantage point, the city glistened like some faraway constellation. Out of reach, but so beautiful I couldn’t take my eyes off it.

The Playlist Before Playlists

When you fall in love with writers, you eventually follow their paper trail into the past. It’s only a matter of time before their words lead you to music, at jazz clubs, piano bars, and stage pits. And for the writers I loved, that meant the Great American Songbook.

These weren’t just songs people listened to once in a while. At the hands of Cole Porter, Rodgers & Hart, Gershwin, Berlin, and others, they were more than fleeting tunes. They were scenes and soundtracks. Rainy street corners with no cab in sight. A lonely early-morning walk through Central Park. Breakups. Hangovers. Big dreams and big disappointments. And always, always a little glimmer of hope.

Other cities have royalty, ruins, and monuments to revolutions. Not New York. Instead, it has the American Songbook, a genre built entirely by its own wild dreamers. Immigrants, starving artists, and writers burning furniture to stay warm in cheap apartments. They all transformed their heartache and hustle into melodies. They took the city’s noise and turned it into music that still echoes through time.

From the 1920s to the 1960s, this music wasn’t a subculture—it was the culture. People from coast to coast danced to it, daydreamed to it, and imagined a version of themselves uptown, cutting the line and being escorted to the best table at the club.

Required Listening (and Why It Still Hits)

A few classics deserve special mention—not just for their artistry, but for what they reveal about the city and those who love it. They were all obvious picks for our new ON THE TOWN collection.

·      “Autumn in New York” – That magical season when the city lets its guard down. (And such irony: Vernon Duke wrote it in the middle of a summer heatwave.)

·       “Manhattan” – A lyrical love letter and a theme that never gets old: being broke and in love. (If that’s not a universal experience, I don’t know what is) The message: you don’t need money to make memories, just a little imagination.

“Carry Me Back To Old Manhattan” – Cabaret legend Mabel Mercer captures the ache of every misfit and romantic who believes they belong nowhere else but New York. Our version here was filmed by Jazz at the Ballroom at the Carlyle Hotel in New York (because if you're going to talk about NY glamour, there's really no better place to do it)

      “New York, New York” (the 1941 MGM musical) – Three sailors, one day, and a city that doesn't slow down. Watch the movie On the Town to see New Yorkers gawking at real heartthrobs. It’s not just a musical number, it’s proof that New Yorkers aren't always blasé.

So why do these songs endure?

Because they don’t lie. They don’t sugarcoat the chaos. They’re about falling (In love. On your face. Often both) and picking yourself back up to start all over again. Loving New York is never a perfect romance (but then, what is??) You’ll leave. You’ll swear you’re done. And, just like that, you’ll be back.

The Feast That Never Stops Moving

New York is a city that turns every writer into a cynic and every cynic into a poet. There’s grumble and glamour, hassle and hope, and plenty of other contradictions and plot twists that keep artists rolling their eyes but spinning stories about the great big city.

One night, it’s dinner at six, curtain at eight, one last cocktail and a secret rendezvous at midnight. The next night, it’s traffic, rejection, and a slice of pizza eaten while walking home alone at 2 a.m. And somehow, both  nights are unforgettable.

Writers grumble. Artists despair. Everyone jaywalks. But they never stop spinning stories about the city. Because no matter how exasperating it gets, New York is endlessly, exasperatingly, inspiring.

400 Candles (and a Few Caveats)

This year, New York turns 400. That’s a lot of birthday candles—and a lot of history to unpack.

The land belonged to the Lenape long before the Dutch showed up with colonial ambitions. The city’s history is full of triumphs. Of diversity, culture, reinvention. But also deep scars. Colonization, inequality, housing crises, crime waves, and all the messy baggage that comes with building something this vast, this fast.

But New York doesn’t pretend to be something it’s not. It owns its contradictions. It evolves loudly, imperfectly, unapologetically.

The American Songbook reflects that same spirit. Bold. Honest. A little brassy. Occasionally off-key. But always unforgettable.

Here’s to the Next Verse

So here’s to another 400 years of chaos and creativity and to a city that never stops making music—whether it's in the form of cars honking, subways screeching, and (if you time it right) saxophone players in Central Park.

Jazz pianist/vocalist CHAMPIAN FULTON with yours truly, SUZANNE WALDOWSKI, and the Mall's resident sax player, RALPH

Because in New York, something’s always about to happen.