5 Albums That Were Inspired & Named After El Paso

Many great musical things have come out of El Paso; we've seen El Paso born musicians make it big, albums recorded in El Paso & music videos filmed in El Paso.

Now we're taking a look at albums that either have El Paso in the name, or were the main reasoning BEHIND the album title. Let's start with a recent addition:

Koe Wetzel "Welcome To Hell Paso": The East Texan country rock artist, Pittsburgh's Koe Wetzel named his 5th album "Welcome to Hell Paso", which was released September 16th, 2022. Not only did he NAME the album after El Paso, he recorded the album at Sonic Ranch & even released a short film ABOUT his trip down to El Paso.

He even released a live performance of his single, "Creeps", AT Sonic Ranch.

Rich Hopkins & The Luminarios "El Paso": Known as the "Godfather of Desert Rock", Arizona's Rich Hopkins (from The Sidewinders) has been making music for well over 30 years. His 1996 album with The Luminarios was simply called "El Paso".

It also served in the name of the song "Soul Leecher"

The Carolyn Sills Combo "Return To El Paso": The 5 song EP "Return to El Paso" was HEAVILY inspired by the Marty Robbins classic (and spoilers he IS coming up later). In fact the album was released on the 60th anniversary of the release of the song, El Paso, so not only did El Paso inspire this album, so did the country legend.

The album serves as a continuation of the story originally told by Marty & it's pretty evident by the lyrical content & the names of the songs.

Khalid "Scenic Drive"/"Sun City": In 2018, our very own Khalid released his EP "Suncity" (can you guess what he was referencing?

Also he put out a mixtape on December 3rd, 2021 called Scenic Drive. While not techincally a studio album or an EP, it was named after one of the most iconic drives in El Paso so it HAS to be mentioned here.

Marty Robbins "El Paso City": And finally, the man who made the most popular song about El Paso, HAS an album named after El Paso called... El Paso City released back in 1976.

The title track even became Marty's 15th number 1 single on the US country charts

It's quite interesting how before there really weren't albums named after El Paso. But in the last 10 years; we've seen an increase of artists naming their albums/songs after El Paso. Who knows how many more we'll see in the future?

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