My area of study involves a form of music that has been under-researched from a geographical perspective, namely that of modern electronic balladry. My work focuses on three acts: Frank Sinatra, specifically his output from 1955-1959, the Glasgow based band The Blue Nile, who came to prominence in the 1980s, and the contemporary south London dubstep artist, Burial. Although these artists have very definite associations with particular places I am most interested in assessing how and why they articulate a shifting and definite sense of general ‘urban-ness’ in their music and in the imagery and marketing that surrounds it. I believe their work can be interpreted as updating the idea of flânerie and I’m keen to highlight how a concept associated with strolling and literature in mid-nineteenth century Paris can be applied to music. In turn I’m interested in how the musical flâneur has evolved from the bar-fly male romantic loner persona, as exemplified by Sinatra in his Capitol years, through the melancholy urban ‘outsider’ rhapsodizing of the Blue Nile, to the de-centred, subject-less, suburban soundscapes of Burial.