Songs About Quebec City – A Starter Playlist

Quebec City has inspired songs that celebrate the entire city as well as tracks rooted in specific neighbourhoods. This is a starter playlist rather than a definitive ranking, with songs that connect to the capital through place, language, memory and local culture.

“Hymne à Québec” — Loco Locass

This is the clearest place to begin. Released in 2010 for the Montréal–Québec hockey series, the song builds a civic portrait around the capital’s history, geography and francophone identity. Listen through the official Spotify track page or your preferred licensed service.

“La Basse-Ville” — Sylvain Lelièvre

Lelièvre’s song is rooted in Lower Town and the social geography created by the escarpment. It belongs to a Quebec songwriting tradition in which streets and neighbourhoods carry as much weight as landmarks. The songwriter’s official site explains the song’s continuing importance in a feature on “La Basse-Ville”.

Lower Town gives the track a useful sense of scale. Instead of treating Quebec City as one postcard view, the song points toward a lived neighbourhood below the cliffs, with its own history and identity.

“St-Roch” — Alaclair Ensemble

This track moves the playlist into contemporary Quebec rap and the Saint-Roch neighbourhood. Place names, local businesses and street-level observations give it a deliberately different texture from a ceremonial city anthem. The track appears on Alaclair Ensemble’s official Bandcamp release.

“0 à 120” — Alaclair Ensemble

“0 à 120” gives the playlist a second contemporary Quebec City connection. Its references move through places including Saint-Roch and Sainte-Foy, while the pace and language feel very different from songs built around nostalgia or civic ceremony.

Together, the two Alaclair tracks are a reminder that songs about a city do not need to sound like tourism campaigns. A neighborhood name, a local route or a familiar business can locate a song just as effectively as a famous landmark.

“Les ailes d’un ange” — Robert Charlebois

This song includes a well-known reference to leaving for Québec. Because “Québec” can refer to the city or the province depending on context, it should not be presented as exclusively about Quebec City. It still broadens the playlist by showing how the place name itself carries meanings that extend beyond the municipal boundary.

Listen by neighbourhood

Play “La Basse-Ville” while exploring Lower Town, then compare its social memory with the commercial and cultural Saint-Roch heard in Alaclair Ensemble. “Hymne à Québec” works as the wide-angle opening or closing track, while Charlebois offers a more ambiguous connection to Québec as a place and identity.

For the places behind the music, use our Old Quebec guide, rue Saint-Joseph guide and Quebec City’s Lost Chinatown.

How to use this playlist on a trip

A short playlist is useful because you can actually remember what you heard. Start with these five tracks before the trip, then replay them after you have walked Lower Town, Saint-Roch and Sainte-Foy. The geography becomes easier to hear once the neighbourhood names are attached to real streets and distances.

There are many more songs connected to Quebec City, and the list can grow without becoming a dump of every track that mentions Québec. The strongest additions are songs with a clear city, neighbourhood or cultural connection that adds a different era or perspective.

Streaming availability and recordings can change, so treat the song titles as the lasting part of the guide rather than expecting every version to remain on one service.

What this starter list is meant to do

This is not a ranking of the “best” Quebec songs, and it is not meant to collect every track that happens to use the word Québec. The goal is to give a visitor a small set of songs with different kinds of connections: a civic anthem, a Lower Town portrait, contemporary Saint-Roch references and a broader Québec association.

That mix makes the playlist more useful on the ground. One song can help you hear the city as a whole, while another makes sense only after you have walked a particular neighbourhood.