Many of these groups and artists have sought lyrical inspiration from their home city.
But it’s not just the artists hailing from Sheffield who have referenced the city in their music, with songs from famous Londoners like The Clash and Stormzy, and Watford’s Elton John, also paying musical homage to the Steel City.
We’ve put together a list of songs mentioning Sheffield.
One of the bands featured is even named after a city suburb, while others have penned lyrics dripping with nostalgia for the Sheffield of yesteryear and some of the tracks celebrate the here and now.
The likes of Pulp, the Arctic Monkeys and Richard Hawley have famously mined their Sheffield roots to spectacular effect when writing their songs, but not all bands from the city have taken the same approach.
Def Leppard’s lead singer Joe Elliott once reportedly described his native city as a ‘great place with great people’ but said 'there’s nothing in Sheffield to write songs about’.
Some of the band’s early songs were instead inspired by a bit of escapism from the drudgery of the members’ daily lives in Sheffield before they hit the big time.
Speaking of their 1980 song Hello America, Joe Elliott once said he and his bandmates had never even been to America at that point, and he was ‘working in a factory with lots of nuts and bolts and no natural light’.
After watching a glamorous US TV show, he recalled thinking ‘wow, this is a lot sexier than Sheffield’, and described the lyrics he subequently wrote about taking a trip to California as him effectively saying ‘get me out of here’.
5. Coles Corner - Richard Hawley
If there's one artist who best embodies Sheffield, it's surely Richard Hawley. He has taken inspiration from his home city when penning countless classic songs over the years and his music can currently be heard in the acclaimed play Standing at the Sky's Edge, about life at Park Hill. One of his best known songs is Coles Corner, which takes its name from the junction of Fargate and Church Street in Sheffield city centre, where the old Cole Brothers department store once stood. The lyrics don't mention Sheffield by name but it brilliantly evokes the city in lines like: "Cold city lights glowing/The traffic of life is flowing/Out over the rivers and on into dark." Photo: Chris Etchells
6. Northern Industrial Town - Billy Bragg
Billy Bragg, pictured here performing at Record Collector, in Broomhill, sang about Sheffield in his song Northern Industrial Town. It's not about Sheffield, per se, but life up north and people's perceptions of it. He sings 'it's not Leeds or Manchester, Liverpool, Sheffield nor Glasgow, it's not Newcastle-on-Tyne, it's Belfast, it's just a northern industrial town'. | Sheffield Newspapers Ltd Photo: Sheffield Newspapers
7. Can I Put You On - Elton John
The famous Watford fan's fondness for glitz and glamour makes him the last person you'd associate with the grit required of a Sheffield steelworker. But he did sing of life in the foundry in Can I Put You On, from the 1971 album Friends. In what is one of his lesser known efforts, Elton sings: "I work for the foundry for a penny and a half a day/Like a blind street musician I never see those who pay/It's dirty work in Birmingham/Better deal for a Sheffield man/If he can rivet then his kids can buy/Candy from the candy man." Photo: Kevin Winter
8. The Snake - The Human League
This song doesn't reference Sheffield as such but the picturesque Snake Pass road which winds its way between the Steel City and Manchester. The lyrics, inviting listeners to 'come and join us', mention how 'the moors stretch out along the way' and even describe alternative routes should Snake Pass inevitably be closed due to snow or high winds. The lines 'the sixty-two or six-two-eight will do if you cannot be late' relate to the more northerly M62 and the A628 Woodhead Pass routes which also lead to Manchester. | OLI SCARFF/AFP via Getty Images Photo: OLI SCARFF/AFP via Getty Images