Charleston, South Carolina

Everything Charleston is known for

38 songs mention this city 70 artists from here

Charleston, South Carolina, a city renowned for its historic charm and coastal beauty, also boasts a rich musical heritage. The city has been an important center for music, particularly in the early development of jazz, influenced by the Gullah community. Today, Charleston is home to 70 artists, including country star Darius Rucker and indie band Band of Horses.

The city's musical presence is also felt in popular culture, with 28 songs mentioning Charleston. Among these are "Hurt" by Johnny Cash and "Hold My Hand" by Hootie & the Blowfish. Charleston's diverse music scene continues to thrive, offering a blend of jazz, soul, classical, and contemporary sounds.

Music in Charleston

Songs About Charleston

Supermarine
Hans Zimmer
100%
Go Rest High on That Mountain
Vince Gill
100%
Hurt
Johnny Cash
100%
Charleston Girl
Black Tiger Mountain
82%
"TITLE"
Charleston
Richard Greene
77%
"TITLE"
The Sound of Silence
Pentatonix
75%
Made That Way
Jordan Davis
55%
"And you talk like you're from Charleston"
I Lost My Mind in Carolina
Jason Eady
55%
"I woke up in Charleston with my head in the sand"
Tulsa County
Son Volt
55%
"Got your note in Charleston"
Hold My Hand
Hootie & the Blowfish
55%
Not Even the Trees
Hootie & the Blowfish
54%
"Lying down in Charleston under the Carolina sky"
I Will Wait
Hootie & the Blowfish
53%
"Another night alone in Charleston"
Send My Love to Caroline
Palmer Anthony
51%
"The picture was in Charleston, Spanish moss in the trees"
I Will Wait
Hootie and the Blowfish
50%
"Another night alone in Charleston"
Not Even the Trees
Hootie and the Blowfish
50%
"Lying down in Charleston under the Carolina sky"
Carolina
Corey Smith
49%
"That spring break in Charleston, it keeps comin' back to haunt me"
The Jogger
Bobby Bare
49%
"From the Charleston coast"
South Carolina Low Country
Josh Turner
48%
""from Hannah down to Charlestowne""
coal county
charles wesley godwin
45%
Sail Away
Randy Newman
44%
"We will cross the mighty ocean into Charleston Bay"

Showing top 20 of 38 songs

Artists From Charleston

D
Darius Rucker
country Pop: 68
B
Band of Horses
indie Pop: 60
D
Dsharp
electronic Pop: 52
B
Boots Electric
electronic Pop: 48
S
Shovels and Rope
americana Pop: 48
W
Wilder Woods
pop Pop: 46
S
Stop Light Observations
rock Pop: 45
S
Shovels & Rope
rock Pop: 44
T
The Outcasts
rock Pop: 42
D
Dave Barnes
country Pop: 40
H
Hollywood
hip-hop Pop: 39
K
Kathy Brown
r-n-b Pop: 39
R
Renni Rucci
hip-hop Pop: 37
S
Susto
americana Pop: 36
S
Susto Stringband
americana Pop: 36
T
The Johnsons
gospel Pop: 35
M
Matt White
indie Pop: 34
B
Bolt
metal Pop: 33
T
The Flirtations
r-n-b Pop: 32
P
Primitive Warfare
metal Pop: 31

Showing top 20 of 70 artists

History of Charleston

Carolina Day: How a Beat-Up Log Fort Put a Tree on the State Flag RoadyGoat

1776

From the waterfront here, Charleston spent June 28, 1776 listening to the guns out at the harbor mouth and waiting to learn whether the city would fall. It did not. At nightfall the battered British fleet pulled back out of range, licked its wounds, and within weeks sailed away for New York, leaving the South alone for nearly three years. Days after the battle, word reached Charleston that the Continental Congress had just signed a Declaration of Independence up in Philadelphia, so the victory and the new nation arrived almost in the same breath. The little palmetto fort was finished and renamed Fort Moultrie for the colonel who held it. And that blue flag with the white crescent, the one Sergeant Jasper climbed the wall to save, became the ancestor of the South Carolina state flag you see flying everywhere today. The palmetto tree was added to it later, a permanent thank-you to the spongy logs that ate the cannonballs and saved the city. The win that came so close to disaster would eventually run a long road through the 1780 fall of Charleston all the way to the British surrender at Yorktown. Every June 28, Charleston still raises a glass and calls it Carolina Day. (Source: Charleston County Public Library, Charleston Time Machine.)

RoadyGoat →

Sullivan's Island: Don't Let Us Fight Without a Flag RoadyGoat

1776

In the middle of the bombardment a British shot cut down the fort's flagstaff, and the blue flag with its white crescent tumbled off the wall and down outside the fort. To the men watching, a fallen flag looked like a fort giving up, and the British out in the harbor surely read it the same way. A sergeant named William Jasper, of the 2nd South Carolina Regiment, would not have it. He shouted to Colonel Moultrie, do not let us fight without a flag, then climbed up over the wall, out into the open with cannonfire tearing past him, walked along the outside of the rampart, and picked the flag back up. He tied it to a sponge staff, the long pole used to swab out a cannon, climbed back up and planted it on the parapet, and held it there until a proper new staff could be rigged. That single act of nerve under fire turned Jasper into an instant legend and gave us the famous image of the flag flying defiant over the little palmetto fort. (Source: National Park Service.)

RoadyGoat → · 4.5 mi away

Sullivan's Island: The Sandbar, the Flagship, and the Admiral's Breeches RoadyGoat

1776

Look out at the water here, because this stretch of channel is where the Royal Navy came undone. Admiral Sir Peter Parker brought his warships in close to pound the fort, and when that did not work, three of his frigates, the Actaeon, the Sphinx, and the Syren, tried to swing around to a spot where they could fire straight down the length of the fort's wall. Instead they ran hard aground on an uncharted shoal of sand out there, the Middle Ground, the very spot where Fort Sumter would be built decades later. Two worked themselves free. The Actaeon stuck fast and had to be burned the next day. With the ships pinned and helpless, the patriots in the fort threw their careful fire at them, and chain shot ripped the rigging and masts of Parker's own flagship, the Bristol, to ribbons. The Bristol was hit more than seventy times and lost scores of men. And in the worst of it a shot caught Admiral Parker himself, wounding him in the knee and thigh and, most famously, tearing the whole seat out of his breeches and leaving the admiral's backside bared to his own fleet. (Source: Wikipedia, Battle of Sullivan's Island.)

RoadyGoat → · 4.5 mi away

Emanuel AME Church

1816

Oldest AME church in the South, co-founded by Denmark Vesey, site of the 2015 shooting that killed nine worshippers.

Fort Sumter National Monument

1861

Confederate batteries fired on this federal fort on April 12, 1861, starting the Civil War.

3.8 mi away

Old Slave Mart Museum

1856

Last known building used as a slave auction house in South Carolina, now a museum on Chalmers Street.

Fort Moultrie

1776

Palmetto log fort that repelled a British fleet in 1776, giving South Carolina its palmetto flag.

4.4 mi away

Rainbow Row

1740

Thirteen colorful Georgian row houses on East Bay Street, the longest cluster of Georgian row houses in the U.S.

Charleston City Market

1804

Historic market operating since the 1800s, famous for Gullah Geechee sweetgrass basket weavers.

Things to Do in Charleston

food 0.2 mi away
Husk

Sean Brock's temple of Southern cooking in Charleston. If it didn't come from the South it's not on the menu.
historical 0.4 mi away
City Market (Charleston)

America's oldest public market since the 1790s. Sweetgrass baskets woven by Gullah artisans.
nature 9.5 mi away
Angel Oak Tree

A 400-year-old Southern live oak with branches reaching 187 feet across. Older than America.

Everything Near Charleston

72 stories, landmarks & places within ~20 miles — the same local lore RoadyGoat plays as you drive through.

Explore Charleston on the Map
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