"Wall(s)" in American Pop Music

Fifty-five years ago today saw the initial construction of the Berlin Wall, which would serve to divide the German city of Berlin for nearly the next 30 years. The Wall also came to symbolize the standoff between the political and economic ideologies of the world's superpowers of the time, notably the U.S.S.R. and the United States, and has served as an important icon in various facets of world culture, including music, as illustrated by the following music videos, among others.

While there are no direct and unambiguous references to the Berlin Wall in songs populating the Billboard Top Ten year-end charts (1951-2015), there are a total of 19 uses of the word wall(s) in 16 songs scattered throughout the 650 songs of the collection. Videos of some of these songs are presented below, where they are divided by whether wall(s) is used literally or metaphorically in the song in question.

First are songs in which the concept of walls is used as a metaphor for division. In pop music, the concept is often used to describe the separation of two individuals or isolation of an individual from the outside world. This kind of use is best exemplified by the following songs:

Another metaphor is in operation when Elton John refers to wall of sound (a production style most often associated with Phil Spector) in this classic from 1974's year-end Top Ten:

But, sometimes, a wall is just a wall in pop music, a place for the pictures or, in the days of yore, a phone to hang, as in the following songs:

To close, two songs that didn't appear in the Billboard year-end Hot 100, but their inclusion here is justified by their titles:

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