How do you define a London song? The question will be asked on Tuesday at Songs in the Key of London, a concert at the Barbican. Curated by Chris Difford of Squeeze, the writer of Up the Junction — that perky tale of Clapham squalor — it will feature musicians and actors including Suggs, Phil Daniels and Andy Serkis singing the city's praises.

However, for all the music-hall mannerisms on show, they will find it difficult to keep the tone celebratory. Once you start searching beyond the pleasant clichés of Waterloo Sunset, it becomes clear that London is not a place that inspires affirmations of civic pride. When Lily Allen asks “Sun is in the sky, oh why oh why would I want to be anywhere else?” in LDN, she does so with a hefty dollop of sarcasm.

Most commonly, the capital is painted as a place of division and decline. In The Clash's London Calling, the city is drowning; in the Pet Shop Boys' West End Girls, it is a “a dead-end world”.

Ralph McTell's Streets of London is possibly the most famous ode to the capital, yet its last line concerns “a world that doesn't care” — and besides, it was originally called Streets of Paris, the title changed for commercial reasons.

By way of contrast, listen to Empire State of Mind, the paean to New York by Jay-Z and Alicia Keys that seems to be on every car stereo and shop PA system in London right now. Though Jay-Z observes deprivation in the verses — “Such a melting pot/On the corner selling rock” — the concerns are blown away when Keys enters for the chorus. “Let's hear it for New York,” she sings, as if auditioning for a job on the NYC tourist board. “These streets will make you feel brand new/Big lights will inspire you”.

New Yorkers have a straighforwardly romantic attitude to their hometown — they think it's totally ace. To find that sort of urban patriotism here, you need to go local. One of the most charming albums I've heard this year is a collection of songs about Lewisham by a blues guitarist, Billy Jenkins. “I am a man from Lewisham,” he sings on the title track, elsewhere extolling Catford Broadway and his local bowling green.

More such gems can be found on the delightful blog, The London Nobody Sings (www.thelondonnobodysings.blogspot.com). The site's author, Kevin Pearce, posts songs about the capital's forgotten corners on a daily basis, the only rules being that “the songs must be brilliant and that the blindingly obvious numbers are excluded”.

One thing is striking, through all the MP3s he has posted, from music hall to punk and grime: all of the songs tell stories — an instinct which unites London songwriters, from The Kinks to Dizzee Rascal. “Where I think London songs tend to be remarkable is in the attention to detail,” Pearce tells me. “I have been unable to find any other city in the world where you can find a whole host of songs relating to less well-known parts like Cricklewood, Belsize Park, Tulse Hill, Stanwell, Richmond, Deptford, and so on, or a specific place like Elvis Costello's Hoover Factory.” In other words, they are less romantics than reporters.

Consequently, the blog is a lesson in social history. There's a little Seventies blues ditty about killing time in a Wimpy on Edgware Road by Ram John Holder, who was later to find fame in the sitcom Desmond's; a band called Tyrell Corporation evoke Cardboard City in the Eighties by invoking the spirit of John Steinbeck; elsewhere, the punk band 999 fête the opening of London's first shopping mall, Brent Cross, in 1976, singing: “Let's all go to where the people go.” What spite! It's enough to make you proud to be a Londoner.

Songs in the Key of London is at the Barbican (0845 120 7550, www.barbican.org.uk) on 9 March
David Smyth is away

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