Living in the Pacific Northwest, it’s easy to forget that the world at large has a relatively slim set of connotations when faced with the word “Seattle.” There’s Starbucks, Microsoft and maybe some fir trees. But the farther you drift from Puget Sound — especially when you reach an international stage — the Emerald City is mostly known for longhaired angst and electric guitars.
KEXP DJ Eva Walker and her journalist husband Jacob Uitti pore over this phenomenon in their new book “The Sound of Seattle: 101 Songs That Shaped a City” (out Aug. 20). Aside from her radio career, Walker sings and plays guitar in rock outfit The Black Tones. Uitti covers music for American Songwriter Magazine, Under the Radar, Guitar World and elsewhere. This impeccably credentialed couple has assembled an eight-decade list of the music they consider most responsible for Seattle’s global fame and continued artistic trajectory.
It’s a chronological affair rather than one dictated by album sales or critical reception. “From a musical level,” says Uitti, “I'm not interested in declarations like who's best, who's worst.” Nevertheless, lists like this have limited room. The book begins with Bing Crosby’s “White Christmas” and ends with Kassa Overall’s “Going Up,” and is interspersed with interview clips from Nancy Wilson, Ben Gibbard, Ayron Jones and many more. The Seattle Times spoke with Walker and Uitti about their selection process and inspiration.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Seattleites will have heard of many of these bands, but not all of them. Deems Tsutakawa’s “Tough Tofu,” for example, is a great deep cut. Were there any artists, especially older ones, that you were really proud to include?
Walker: That's one of the goals of the book. It's entertaining but it’s also education. Some of your favorites are there; Nirvana, Pearl Jam, so on. It’s educational because there are lesser-known people on the list that you should know about, like Deems, Vitamin D, Emerald Street Boys. I grew up listening to Deems. I actually graduated from high school with his nephew. That song, “Tough Tofu,” came on all the time on 98.9 Smooth Jazz. And I was really excited to include Dave Lewis in here and to dig into his catalog. I love, love, love organ music.
Were there any musician interviews you wanted but couldn't get for this book?
Walker: I was trying to reach Macklemore. I actually met him last year, because I ended up in one of his music videos. That would have been cool. But he still shows up a lot in the book!
Uitti: I was just emailing people who are in the book to let them know that it’s coming out. And, you know, we could have talked to Fleet Foxes. We could have talked to Car Seat [Headrest]. There's tons of people that could have been involved. But you have to make a choice.
You didn't always pull the most popular song from a band. Some of them seemed like songs that were dear to you. How did that process work?
Walker: I think a lot of that was based on the year we wanted to cover. We were trying to cover as many years within the 80 that we could. We didn't want to have everyone that had a hit in '94 all on top of each other, especially if they had another hit or there was a fun underground song that Northwesterners know.
Uitti: The Perfume Genius song [“Queen”] was a song that I just found myself listening to all the time. And the Dave Matthews song [“Funny the Way It Is”], you know, he wasn't doing music in Seattle earlier in his career. He only started recording here after he moved here with his wife. Now he's a central figure in Seattle. So that was the thought process there.
The book takes the form of a list, but the narrative and writing resists hard takes. You're not constantly saying, this guy's the best, this other guy's a virtuoso. Was that a purposeful thing? How did you veer away from ranking or comparing artists?
Uitti: I wanted to present the songs in a historical context and explain why we thought it had merit. To write about why something feels significant to me, to my soul. I think Eva probably felt similarly. As a DJ, she plays stuff that resonates with her core, not because it’s the impactful, explosive song of the moment. We think of things in terms of what hits for us. And the hope is that if we describe it, and how it specifically resonates, it'll have some universal legs.
Walker: I agree with everything Jake just said. That's why I like being at KEXP, because I can play what I want for myself, versus the kind of robot radio where not a lot of it resonates with me. Still, if there’s something in pop music I want to play, like I want to play a Taylor Swift song, I'll play it.
A lot of the '90s and early aughts songs in this book were big. People in Seattle knew them, but the nation also knew them. The more recent parts of the list feel more localized. Do you think this is a product of the grunge movement? The internet? How expensive Seattle is? Clearly, we don’t have national rock radio now. What do you think contributes to this shift?
Uitti: I mean, we have Ayron Jones, and he just had two or three rock hits on [the] Billboard charts. But yeah, I think the fractured nature of entertainment is a big thing. It’s just how the world is now. Maybe some of the people from the 2020s or late 2010s aren't household names. But it probably has to do with the fact that there aren't as many household names anymore. And grunge aside, it's kind of a weirder music that historically comes out of Seattle. We don't produce Olivia Rodrigos all the time, or Billie Eilishes. We have more niche stuff. Macklemore, as amazing as he was, was writing about thrift shops. And Sir Mix-A-Lot was writing about butts.
Walker: A lot of people write about butts! [laughs] But I’d also say, the further back you go, the more exclusive the industry was. Now with radio, like, with NPR and KEXP, it's just gotten so big. There's so much content. And the internet might as well be outer space.
