ho-BO-ken? I'm dyyyyyyinnnng

What's your favorite song about the Mile Square city?

Andy J. Ward, an Asbury Park musician, just released a single called “Hoboken,” and hey, it’s kinda about Hoboken. (That’s not always the case.) It’s a loping, mid-tempo love song about missed connections and regrets, with Ward’s wavery, Neil Young-sh vocals and a not-too-long guitar solo; it reminds me of Fountain of Wayne’s “Hackensack.”

But at least something happens in Hoboken in the lyrics, and it even rhymes. “Words were spoken/ Hearts were broken/ Regrets awoken now/ Wounds were opened/ Sorries token/ Left here in Hoboken.”

Well done, Mr. Ward.

That got me thinking about other Hoboken songs. Punk scholars know the track by Gilman Street avatars Operation Ivy (although the band never got any closer than the Dirt Club in Bloomfield; maybe Jesse Michaels had his heart broken in the Mile Square City at a teenager?) Yo La Tengo, the ultimate Hoboken band for nigh on forty years, gave us the beautiful “Night Falls on Hoboken.” And back when Maxwell’s was still a gin mill for shift workers at the coffee factory, The Insect Trust released the wonderful Hoboken Saturday Night LP on Columbia Records, with both the deliciously funky title song and a cover of Louis “Moondog” Hardin’s “Be A Hobo,” which namechecks Hoboken.

The Hoboken Museum chronicles Matthew White’s 1947 composition, “I Was Born In Hoboken,” a song that schoolchildren have sung for generations (or so I’m told.) And more recently, some Internet wag who calls himself The Guy Who Sings Songs About Cities and Towns recorded “The Hoboken Song,” although IMHO, it’s not very good. (I mean, c’mon, no mention of baseball but he namedrops The Cake Boss?)

And then of course there’s this one, which I do happen to like.

It’s only natural that some of the musicians who congregated to Maxwell’s would mention Hoboken in song. There’s Chris Stamey’s “Brushfire in Hoboken,” the Cucumbers’ “My Town,” the Delevantes’ “John Wayne Lives in Hoboken,” and Scott E. Moore - whose "Writer’s Hang” showcases were an institution at the much-missed Goldhawk for many years - penned a paean to Hoboken’s most famous son, “Bye Bye Frankie.”

Richard Barone informs me that “a” - the band that convinced Steve Fallon to book a live band at Maxwell’s for the first time, whose members went on to the become the Bongos and Individuals - had a song called “Hoboken Party” (which, sadly, they never released.)

Here’s something I either didn’t know or forgot. In 1995, singer/songwriter Gregg Cagno teamed up with musicians Christian Bauman, Linda Sharar and the bands The Marys, Big Happy Crowd and The Amazing Incredibles to create the musical collective Camp Hoboken. The artists collaborated on songs and performances until 1999 and released two albums, including two Hoboken songs: “Hollywood Comes to Hoboken” and “Hoboken Lullabye.”

Pat Boone covered Billy Vaughn’s “Hoboken Baby” in 1956 (it was not a hit,) and Franklin Jonas (the youngest and not-famous Jonas Brother) released a bombastic, patriotic mess of a tune called “Hoboken” two years ago that sounds like something you’d play during 4th of July fireworks (although I’m not sure if anyone actually heard it.)

You’d think the birthplace of Frank Sinatra and the Bongos could do a little better. What say you, Internet? Do you know any other Hoboken songs? Comment below.