This TED Talk features publicist and music advocate Elizabeth Kewine recorded live at TEDx Memphis 2018.

Each of these songs represents a scene, a movement. In some cases, a sonic revolution that completely altered the course of popular music.

They're also calling cards almost for those cities.

Songs totally linked with their city's identity and might be why you probably consider them

to be music cities. Now, the magical mythical thing, the thing we kind of all love about stories

like these is that those cities weren't doing anything in particular

to make those moments happen. There's no formula for capturing lightning in a bottle. A formula didn't

give us grunge music or introduce Tupac to Dr. Dre. And there's definitely no blueprint for

how to open your record business in a South Memphis neighborhood that turns out is home to Booker T. Jones, William Bell, and Albert King.

So this is just something that happens then, right? When the stars perfectly align, great music just happens.

And in the meantime, New York and Nashville can churn

out the hits that come through our radios, define our generations, and soundtrack our weddings

and our funerals and everything in between. I don't know about you, but the very idea of that

is just deadly boring to me.

There are musicians all around you making powerful, important music.

And thanks to the Internet, and it's limitless possibilities for creators to create music and fans to discover that music, those zeitgey songs don't have to be handed down to us from some conference room

full of songwriters in a corporate high-rise. But also, and more importantly, we can't decide

that it's just something that happens because music is about so much more than hits, those big iconic moments that change everything.

It's more than just entertainment.

For so many of us, music is truly a way to navigate life.

A means of self-expression, sure,

but it also helps us find our self ourselves worth and figure out who we are.

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