50 Best Country Songs About Los Angeles
Country Music Capturing the Spirit of Los Angeles
There’s a strange kind of tension that hangs over Los Angeles in a country song. It’s not the small-town porch swing kind of slow, and it’s not the fast burn of Nashville bars either. Out here, there’s smog in the sunset, billboards staring down at you, and that uneasy mix of hope and exhaustion. You hear steel guitar bending over palm trees and freeways, and it feels both wide open and cornered at the same time. Country music in LA carries that push and pull between chasing something and wondering if you already missed it.
These songs don’t smooth over the city. They leave the traffic noise in, keep the heat haze over the Hollywood sign, let the ocean wind mess with the mic. It’s the sound of people trying to make sense of a place that can look like a movie one moment and a bad motel parking lot the next. Sometimes it’s sweet and slow, sometimes it’s a little bitter around the edges. It fits into the same world as pop, rock, country, and R&B songs that twist the LA image into something rougher, stranger, or unexpectedly tender.
There’s no single version of Los Angeles in these tracks. Some feel like sunrise at the Santa Monica Pier, some like the grit of downtown alleys, some like an empty drive down the PCH at night with no destination in mind. They all carry a little bit of that shimmer and that letdown, tangled together in ways that stay with you. Here are the best country songs that capture Los Angeles in all its messy, magnetic layers.
Top 10 California Country Songs
1. 'L.A. Freeway'—Guy Clark
2. 'Country Boy (You Got Your Feet in L.A.)'—Glen Campbell
3. 'Streets of Bakersfield'—Dwight Yoakam & Buck Owens
4. 'All the Gold in California'—Larry Gatlin & the Gatlin Brothers
5. 'Lonesome L.A. Cowboy'—New Riders of the Purple Sage
6. 'Sin City'—The Flying Burrito Brothers
7. 'California Sunrise'—Jon Pardi
8. 'I Burned L.A. Down'—Noah Cyrus
9. 'L.A. to the Moon'—Ronnie Milsap
10. 'Hollywood'—Mitch Rossell
Country Songs About Life in Los Angeles #11—20
11. 'California'—Miranda Lambert
12. 'Friends in California'—Waylon Jennings
13. 'She's So California'—Gary Allan
14. 'Golden State'—John Doe
15. 'California on My Mind'—Merle Haggard
16. 'California Cottonfields'—Merle Haggard
17. 'Leaving Hollywood'—Something Out West
18. 'Back to L.A.'—XL Middleton
19. 'Hollywood Nights'—Bob Seger
20. 'It Never Rains in Southern California'—Albert Hammond
Los Angeles Country Music Hits #21—30
21. 'California'—Big & Rich
22. 'Hey California'—Jon Pardi
23. 'L.A.'—Tim McGraw
24. 'Adios to California'—John Hiatt
25. 'Hollywood'—Cory Marks
26. 'I Love L.A.'—Randy Newman
27. 'California Dreamin''—The Mamas & the Papas
28. 'Free Fallin''—Tom Petty
29. 'Closing Time In California'—Luke Bryan
30. 'The Heart of California'—Terry Allen and the Panhandle Mystery Band
Country Songs About Moving to Los Angeles #31—40
31. 'California'—Jamestown Revival
32. 'Blue Tacoma'—Russell Dickerson
33. 'Where the Wild Things Are'—Luke Combs
34. 'California'—Phantom Planet
35. 'The Ballad of Jed Clampett'—Flatt and Scruggs
36. 'Dixie Lullaby'—Chris Stapleton
37. 'LAX'—Jake Owen
38. 'California'—Joni Mitchell
39. 'Hollywood'—Waterloo Revival
40. 'Back to California'—The Midnight North
California Country Lifestyle Songs #41—50
41. 'Hollywood Hills'—Tim McGraw
42. 'Midnight Train to Georgia'—Gladys Knight & the Pips
43. 'Going to California'—Led Zeppelin
44. 'Take It Easy'—Eagles
45. 'Hotel California'—Eagles
46. 'California Stars'—Billy Bragg & Wilco
47. 'California Sun'—The Rivieras
48. 'Beverly Hills'—Weezer
49. 'LA Woman'—The Doors
50. 'California Dreamin'—The Mamas & the Papas
© 2025 Carson McQueen
