Each month, Our State senior editor — and resident soundtrack maker — Mark Kemp, a former music editor of Rolling Stone, curates a one-of-a-kind Spotify playlist featuring North Carolina songs and musicians.

It’s challenging to create a playlist of music associated with Charlotte because so many stars got their start in North Carolina’s largest city. In the earliest days of recording — the ’20s, ’30s, and ’40s — Charlotte was in a bit of a competition with Nashville and other Southern cities for becoming Music City, USA — the home of American country music. We all know which city ultimately won that battle, but many country legends cut some of their first recordings in a studio on South Tryon Street owned by RCA Records’ A&R man Eli Oberstein. The inventor of bluegrass music, Kentucky’s Bill Monroe, recorded a string of his early classic songs in Charlotte as part of the Monroe Brothers, as did Grand Ole Opry star Uncle Dave Macon, bluegrass group the Delmore Brothers, and many others.

Since the early days, the Queen City has been at the cutting edge of popular music. Pioneering country guitarist Arthur Smith gained fame on Charlotte radio and TV in the ’40s and ’50s, and Charlotte-born R&B stars like Nappy Brown and Wilbert Harrison recorded some of the biggest hits of the ’50s. In later years, of course, the Queen City would become known more for banking and NASCAR than for music, but it remained a popular spot for recording artists until the 1980s when R.E.M. cut their first two albums at a studio in Charlotte. In fact, one of R.E.M.’s more popular songs from those sessions, “So. Central Rain,” was named for the street where the studio was located.

So, for our purposes, we’ve compiled a playlist of 20 songs that were either recorded in Charlotte by outside stars or performed by musicians who come from Charlotte and surrounding cities. For example, Marshville-born Randy Travis may not be from Charlotte, but the Queen City played a huge role in his success as a country star. The same goes for the Avett Brothers, from nearby Concord, who got their start playing on the streets of downtown Charlotte. Today, there are numerous R&B and hip-hop artists associated with Charlotte, and we’ve tried to bring things up to date by including some — but hardly all — of those and many other musicians who have made the Queen City a hotbed of American song.