The Music We Think You Listen to Based on Which Dallas Neighborhood You Live in

Dallas encompasses several distinct neighborhoods, each with its own culture, history and stereotypes for us to make fun of. Anyone who’s spent more than a couple of weeks in the city will happily tease North Oak Cliff’s polyamorous, Highland Park’s trust-fund kids or the Knox-Henderson finance bros clinging to their youth. Whether you actually fit the bill or not, people love to make an assumption about you based on your address — it’s Dallas we’re talking about, after all.

We’re in no position to judge; we’re merely Observers. We’ve looked at several major neighborhoods in Dallas, and, after some broad, sweeping assumptions, have decided what artists we think the residents might be listening to the most.

This is based on several factors, including the neighborhoods’ general vibe and the existing stereotypes about people who live there.

If you live in one of these areas and have never heard of the artists mentioned, you don’t have to comment “who?” on social media. Consider this a discovery opportunity new music, we guess.

Deep Ellum listens to: a little bit of everything

Deep Ellum is known for its live music and nightlife scene, and with blocks of bars and clubs, it’s hard to pin the neighborhood down to just one genre, so we won’t even try. Take a walk down Commerce Street and you might hear Midwest emo throwbacks emitting from an emo bar, or the swinging strums of a blues guitar at a back patio show, or a raging headliner playing a sold-out concert at The Bomb Factory. Walk too far, too late, and you might hear Deep Ellum’s current on-repeat; gunfire with ad-libs provided by the sirens of the Dallas Police Department. In truth, Deep Ellum is the beating heart of Dallas’ music scene. More than likely, its residents’ playlists aren’t dominated by one genre, but are a hodge-podge of the musicians we share with the world who launched their careers on the grimy curbs of Deep Ellum.

Anthem: “Deep Elem Blues” by the Grateful Dead
Artists to listen to: Tripping Daisy, SZA, Bobby Sessions, Blind Lemon Jefferson

Oak Lawn listens to: club classics and the Heated Rivalry soundtrack

Oak Lawn is our “gayborhood.” Every city worth visiting has one, and ours just so happens to be one of the best in the country. The neighborhood is home to one of two lesbian bars in all of Texas, the city’s largest concentration of LGBTQ+ care resources and, in true Southern fashion, a church with gay pastors and a rainbow staircase. In Oak Lawn, the party goes late, and at any given point in time, somewhere in the neighborhood, at least one Charli XCX song is vibrating through a nearby speaker. But it’s not just Miss XCX that brings the house down. Good luck going to any bar in Oak Lawn without hearing at least one song that played while the two fictional closeted hockey players on the current biggest (and gay) TV show, Heated Rivalry, exchanged a secret kiss.

Anthem: “All The Things She Said” by t.A.T.u, but also the remix version by Harrison
Artists to listen to: Robyn, Indigo Girls, Diana Ross, Kylie Minogue

Uptown listens to: whatever’s popular on TikTok this week

Of all the neighborhoods in Dallas, Uptown is where you are most likely to get cut off by a 24-year-old “entrepreneur” in a leased BMW, and such a person listens only to the most popular mainstream hits of the past couple of years. Someone crunched the numbers, and Dallas is almost all chains, and we’d bet money a lot of them are in Uptown. Suffice to say, there aren’t a lot of off-the-beaten path things in Uptown, and we’d venture to claim not a lot of cool music either. But hey, if you want to listen to a sped-up two-minute track specifically engineered for virality while you get your steps in on a treadmill at Equinox, who are we to judge? Plus, it’s not all bad. “Lush Life” by Zara Larsson at max volume wouldn’t be the worst soundtrack to paying for an overpriced espresso martini.

Anthem: “Big Guy” by Ice Spice
Artists to listen to: YoungBoy Never Broke Again, Artemas, Jack Harlow

Bishop Arts listens to: 2030s Grammy winners

Bishop Arts is the new enclave for those who want to be ahead of the curve. It’s got a cool vibe, though usually ruined by the people who live within a couple of blocks of Bishop Avenue, driving up prices in the neighborhood and drinking matcha lattes ahead of their pilates class while claiming they don’t fit in with the rest of Dallas. But the main strip still retains some of its suavity, despite all the transplants, and the surrounding streets are decorated with Dallas’ true hidden gems. And if the neighborhood is good enough for guest appearances from Doechii, Leon Bridges, and Lana Del Rey, well then, it’s good enough for us. Besides, there’s no better place to catch intimate shows from the true up-and-comers, usually in some of the area’s bookstores and record shops.

Anthem: “Texas Sun” Leon Bridges
Artists to listen to: Teethe, Leon Bridges (live and on the corner of Bishop and Seventh Street), Mk.Gee

The Rest of Oak Cliff listens to: its neighbors

Bishop Arts is a niche pocket within Oak Cliff, mostly as a result of gentrification, but the true music and soul of Oak Cliff, which makes up the largest part of Dallas by area, has a storied musical history spanning multiple genres and generations. The neighborhood, outside the few blocks that are Bishop Arts, takes pride in its people, so locals’ playlists are certainly inundated with the work of their once-upon-a-time neighbors.

Anthem: “Pride and Joy” by Stevie Ray Vaughan
Artists to listen to: Stevie Ray Vaughn, Zillionaire Doe, The D.O.C., BashfortheWorld

Lakewood listens to: Dad Rock

Lakewood is mostly residential. As in, there are many passenger vehicles driving 20 mph through school zones on those roads. And they’re cruising to the sweet sounds of classics. Whether that be throwing it all the way back to Clapton, or newer dads jamming to 2000s hits from the Strokes (yes, that means you’re getting older). In this part of town, the kids are being forced to listen to their parents’ music, which will eventually shape their own tastes. It’s the circle of music, and a beautiful one at that.

Anthem: “I Won’t Back Down” by Tom Petty
Artists to listen to: War on Drugs, Lenny Kravitz, the Eagles, Bruce Springsteen

East Dallas listens to: the Erykah Badu album released 15 years ago

East Dallas is where the lifers live. The born-and-raised city historians live on the side of town splattered with single-family homes and hole-in-the-walls you could only know if you have lived here forever. And yes, they can name every lesser-known local act you need to add to your playlist. The East-siders know this city better than most, but they don’t know when to stop holding their breath on Erykah Badu’s next album. The artist, who may as well be the Patron Saint of Dallas, traded South Dallas, where she grew up, for a home by White Rock Lake, and we’d like her Eastern neighbors to ask where the many-times-delayed Abi & Alan record is the next time they run into her at Whole Foods.

Anthem: “Window Seat” by Erykah Bad
Artists to listen to: Butthole Surfers, Turnstile, Polyphonic Spree, Erykah Badu

Park Cities listens to: the Top 40 Hits and Beethoven

The average price of a home in Park Cities is about $2.5 million. Last time we checked, your average bartender, or journalist for that matter, wasn’t looking to settle down in the area anytime soon. But money can’t buy taste, and though there are surely millions of dollars of artwork in the homes of Park Cities, there probably aren’t the lo-fi sounds of the next best thing. We imagine a pre-game for a gala in one of the palatial homes features Taylor Swift’s latest mediocre album, before the live string quartet arrives to play classical music for stuffy millionaires, of course.

Anthem: “24k Magic” – Bruno Mars
Artists to listen to: Imagine Dragons, Bruno Mars, Meghan Trainor, Mozart