Los Angeles

X was known for songs about the seedy side of Los Angeles, covering the shady characters and unsavory places instead of the glamourous side commonly portrayed in the media. This song is about a very racist person that feels compelled to leave the city for a less diverse environment. It's not about a real person, but a type of person X vocalist Exene Cervenka came across. Explaining how the song is not to be taken as an endorsement of this behavior, she told BAM in 1980: "'Los Angeles' is supposed to be this racist song. You wouldn't write, 'She hated every negro and other people too,' if you're being truthful about the character. You'd write, 'She hated every ni--er and Jew,' because she didn't hate negroes she hated ni--ers. It's not a personal she. People don't understand. When you read a book, you don't think the narrator's the person who wrote the book. There's a separation."

The lead singer of X, John Doe, wrote this with Cervenka and sang lead on the track with her. He appeared as Julianne Moore's husband in the movie Boogie Nights.

In a Songfacts interview with Exene Cervenka, she said: "That's real film noir there. John wrote the words on that one, and that is a pretty definitive song about racism, hatred, and all that kind of stuff. But in the punk days, it was a little different. It's hard to describe how people would think then, but people who were well-read had more literary minds and they could understand that kind of narrative. It's just a story about someone who couldn't handle the big city anymore. Very The Day of the Locust [a 1939 novel by Nathanael West]. Just too much." "A lot of people can't handle the city," Cervenka added. "Any city. But it's a fantasy kind of thing based on some real people and some who are fictional. I think of our songs as short stories."