50 Best Rock Songs About Chicago

Top Rock Tracks Connected to Chicago

Chicago has a strange way of sticking in your head, even if you’ve never walked its streets. The skyline flashes by in movies and music videos, half romanticized, half worn-down, and somewhere between those images sits the feeling these songs pull from. Grit and neon, snowstorms and dive bars. Some of these tracks call out the city by name while others circle around its moods, its mythology, the stories that could only come from a place like this. They may not literally trace its map, but they carry that unmistakable Chicago pulse.

There’s a sharpness to the sound when artists channel the city. It’s in the jagged guitars that cut like a bitter wind off Lake Michigan or the drawl of a singer weaving through tales of late nights and stubborn dreams. These songs fall across genres, bleeding from pop, rock, country, and R&B songs into something harder to pin down. Chicago is always shifting, so the music matches it. One track might feel like a sweaty basement show on the South Side, the next like a late-night drive past empty streets where the only lights are traffic signals and bar signs.

The best part is how messy it all feels. Not a postcard version of Chicago, but the rush and noise and quiet heartbreak hiding between the El tracks and old brick buildings. Some of these songs take you there with a single lyric, others with nothing more than a riff that feels like the city itself humming under your skin. Here are the best rock songs connected to Chicago to kick off your playlist.

1. 'Saturday in the Park' by Chicago

2. 'Lake Shore Drive' by Aliotta Haynes Jeremiah

3. 'Sweet Home Chicago' by The Blues Brothers

4. 'Via Chicago' by Wilco

5. 'Back to Chicago' by Styx

6. 'The Night Chicago Died' by Paper Lace

7. 'Jesus Just Left Chicago' by ZZ Top

8. 'Chicago' by Tom Waits

9. 'Born in Chicago' by The Paul Butterfield Blues Band

10. 'Tonight, Tonight' by The Smashing Pumpkins

11. 'Take Me Back to Chicago' by Chicago

12. 'Chicago Wind' by Merle Haggard

13. 'A Guided Tour of Chicago' by The Lawrence Arms

14. 'Another February' by Local H

15. 'Rock and Roll McDonalds' by Wesley Willis

16. 'Chicago Is So Two Years Ago' by Fall Out Boy

17. 'You're the Inspiration' by Chicago

18. 'Chicago Fanphair '93' by Local H

19. 'On a Freezing Chicago Street' by Local H

20. 'A Guided Tour of Chicago' by The Lawrence Arms

21. 'Chicago is Not Chicago' by Soul Coughing

22. 'Chicago' by The Tossers

23. 'Slow Down Chicago' by The Tossers

24. 'Chelsea Dagger' by The Fratellis

25. 'My Kind of Town' by Frank Sinatra

26. 'The Belle of Chicago' by John Philip Sousa

27. 'Chicago' by Portugal. The Man

28. 'On the South Side of Chicago' by Freddy Cole

29. 'I’m From Chicago' by Bob Dylan

30. 'Chicago Is So Two Years Ago' by Fall Out Boy

31. 'Chicago' by The Doobie Brothers

32. 'Chicago Bound' by Canned Heat

33. 'Chicago Calling' by Cyril Davies

34. 'The Oldest Living Groupie in Chicago' by Doug Ashdown

35. 'The Lake' by The Smashing Pumpkins

36. 'Dear Chicago' by Ryan Adams

37. 'Welcome to Chicago' by Welcome to Chicago

38. 'We're All Crazy in Chicago' by The Buckinghams

39. 'Chicago Stomp' by Duke Ellington

40. 'Cold and Windy Night' by The Fantastic Four

41. 'Stuck in Chicago' by Cate Brothers

42. 'The Torture Doctor' by Alkaline Trio

43. 'Goodbye to Guyville' by Urge Overkill

44. 'Renegade' by Styx

45. 'I Am One' by The Smashing Pumpkins

46. 'Sugar, We're Goin Down' by Fall Out Boy

47. 'Chicago' by Enuff Z'nuff

48. 'Chicago' by The Purple Hearts

49. 'Welcome to Chicago, Motherfucker' by The Tossers

50. 'Goodnight Chicago' by Rainbow Kitten Surprise