Song · Fear
“I Love Livin' in the City” by Fear
From the album The Record (1982)
“I Love Livin' in the City” by Fear appears on 2 radio countdowns from 1 station between 2002 and 2003. It was first released in 1982 on the album The Record. Its best result is #928 on the Fred XM Top 2002 Songs of All-Time (July 2002). In the combined RockLists rankings it is #4,895 alternative song of all time.
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Fear's first single, "I Love Livin' in the City", came out on the Los Angeles label Criminal Records in 1978, with Lee Ving credited for words and music. The band went back to it during sessions in 1979 that never saw release, then cut it a third time for their 1982 debut album, The Record.
It's a mock-cheery tour of an L.A. gone to rot, blood and bodies strewn across the pavement, and the overkill is the whole joke: film professor David E. James held it up as a model of punk's habit of tipping into self-parody, and set its imagery beside Charles Bukowski's. The B-side, "Now You're Dead", chewed over the Kennedy assassination and the conspiracy theories around it. Later the song turned up in the 1998 film SLC Punk! and in the games Tony Hawk's Underground 2 and The Warriors.
Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.
RockLists rankings
Alternative & Modern Rock
All Rock Formats
All-time and decade countdowns
| Year | # | Station | Countdown | of |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2002 | 928 | Fred (XM 44) | Fred XM Top 2002 Songs of All-Time (July 2002) | 2002 |
| 2003 | 1821 | Fred (XM 44) | Fred XM Top 2044 Songs of All-Time (July 2003) | 2044 |
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