Readers recommend: songs about parks results

Readers recommendPop and rockCut down on your porklife, mate, and take a route straight through this week's theme about parklife

An easy, mid-pace beat; falsetto harmonies; major-seventh chords; plenty of reverb to make everything shimmer, and lovelorn lyrics about being stood up: the ideal ingredients for a park-themed song. Chicago soulster Billy Stewart's 1965 hit Sitting in the Park set the bar high for such songs. "Hope over experience, keeps him sitting in the park waiting for her," says LittleRiver. "Pretty, pretty song."

Ticking a few of the same boxes is Gentlemen of the Park, by Swinging London types Episode Six, whose lineup included a pre-Deep Purple Ian Gillan and Roger Glover. The track was included on cult (translation: not many people like it) film Les Bicyclettes de Belsize.

Parks offer an oasis of tranquility in the tumult of urban life. "Someone left the cake out in the rain …" The oft-derided MacArthur Park (named after a public space in Los Angeles) is convincingly defended by RR commenter AshenFacedSupremo, who praises "genius" songwriter Jimmy Webb for his ability to "achieve the perspective of an old man looking back on a life that is filled with … fragile, fleeting, bittersweet memories and painful regrets". So which version to choose? Many preferred Donna Summer's disco reading. "Pop music never ceases to surprise," says AshenFacedSupremo.

The park in Department of Eagles' complex but beautiful In Ear Park also prompts stirring memories. RR nominator Fuel says it's "about going to the same spot in a park where someone close to you once went … a folkish Dock of the Bay".

RR regular Slademan recalls Nick Nicely's appealingly odd 1982 single Hilly Fields (1892) being described in NME as "the best psychedelic record made since the 60s – multilayered, lovingly crafted and endlessly complex – it could come straight off Magical Mystery Tour". Something about parks seems to capture the imagination of the psychedelic-ly-inclined, as evidenced by the Small Faces' mythical Itchycoo Park "one of the greatest records ever made", says Beltway Bandit).

Meanwhile in In tha Park, Ghostface Killah and Black Thought locate the origins of hip-hop in the urban outdoors: "Hip-hop was set out in the park/ We used to do it out in the dark."

Tangerine Dream recorded an entire album of park-inspired music, Le Parc. Gaudi Park was named after Barcelona's uniquely odd yet dramatic Parc Guell. And staying in Spain, the breathtaking Moorish garden at the Alhambra is celebrated in Enrique Morente's Generalife, a song that RR nominator (and resident of Spain) Makinavaja says actually manages to do them justice.

To Washington DC in the 70s, and jazz trumpeter Donald Byrd's third album with the Blackbyrds opened with breezy funk workout Rock Creek Park, all heavy breathing and darting flute. The lyrics, however, concern nocturnal park-use that I suspect contravenes bylaws.

The narrator of A Walk in the Park is trying to forget his breaking-up-with-girlfriend woes. No idea if he succeeded, but Sub Pop's Baltimore duo Beach House's sublime melody is a tonic. And on the Curtis Mayfield-penned Um, Um, Um, Um, Um, Um, Major Lance observes someone experiencing similar park-based anguish.

Here's the playlist:

Sitting in the Park – Billy Stewart

Gentlemen of the Park – Episode Six

MacArthur Park – Donna Summer

In Ear Park – Department of Eagles

Hilly Fields (1892) – Nick Nicely

Itchycoo Park – The Small Faces

In tha Park – Ghostface Killah (featuring Black Thought)

Gaudi Park – Tangerine Dream

Generalife – Enrique Morente

Rock Creek Park – The Blackbyrds

A Walk in the Park – Beach House