Why is New Jersey the only state that’s never had a state song?

New Jersey is the only state that’s never had a state song.

This is a place, mind you, that has taken the time to designate a state mollusk shell (the knobbed whelk); a state dance (the square dance); and a state microbe (Streptomyces griseus) — not to mention a state animal, flower, fruit, bug, reptile, and dinosaur.

And it’s not like New Jersey isn’t a crucible of musicians, being the home of Frank Sinatra and Bruce Springsteen; Dionne Warwick and Jon Bon Jovi; Wyclef Jean and Whitney Houston; Sarah Vaughan and Frankie Valli; Lauryn Hill and Connie Francis; Halsey and Queen Latifah; and Paul Simon and Count Basie.

Yet not one tune has risen to represent the Garden State’s multitudes, adding to the reputation of a state that’s already (in)famous for being the only one where you can’t pump your own gas, and where you can’t be served food in a brewpub.

Why no song?

“It’s a political hot potato,” said Tom Cunningham, host of the Springsteen on Sunday radio program, 107.1 The Boss (WWZY-FM, Asbury Park), and an editor at All Access Music Group, a radio and record industry website.

“You’ve got North, Central, and South Jersey — unique areas with their own ideas about music. Hopefully, one day the twain shall meet. But not now.”

Ultimately, politicians are fearful of alienating constituents by lauding one regional composer’s song over all others.

Besides, “there’s just no one song that speaks to everybody in this state, with great images and an appealing tune, like ‘Take Me Home, Country Roads’ does for West Virginia,” said John Weingart, associate director of the Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers, and also the host of Music You Can’t Hear On The Radio, New Jersey’s oldest program of folk music and bluegrass, on WPRB-FM and WPRB.com.

Songs have to be approved by the state Legislature and made official with the governor’s signature.

“No governor wants to make a decision on a state song,” said Wayne Dibofsky, chief of staff of Assemblyman Joe Danielsen (D., Middlesex and Somerset Counties).

Ever the optimist, however, Danielsen submitted a bill earlier in the current legislative session nominating a state song entitled, fittingly enough, “New Jersey State Song,” written by a constituent named Violet Barrett Paterson. She initially agreed to be interviewed, but has not returned calls or texts.

“The song is very nice, but it never got any traction in the Assembly,” Dibofsky said. “Technically, it’s still alive, but my sense is it’s not going anywhere.”

The only person who came close to getting a song venerated as the official tune of the Garden State was a Phillipsburg, Warren County, chemical factory worker named Red Mascara.

He was labeled “New Jersey’s most persistent lobbyist” in his 2015 New York Times obituary after a failed 55-year quest to make his 1960 ditty, “I’m From New Jersey,” the state song. Mascara died at 92.

“The song is catchy, but not a great tune,” noted Robert Rawlins, professor of music theory at Rowan University. “A state song is not a place for innovation. It has to be something an amateur choir could sing, or a high school band could play.”

In 1972, the Legislature actually approved a bill to elevate Mascara’s song, which expresses earnest adoration of the state’s hospitality, lakes, and “fun-filled mountains.”

But then-Gov. William Cahill took a stand and vetoed it. “ ‘This song stinks,’ is what he told people,” Weingart said.

For a while, New Jerseyans thought they had a winner with Springsteen’s “Born to Run,” a blue-collar anthem of restless yearning that references Jersey staples like a beach, an amusement park, car engines, and a highway “jammed with broken heroes.”

Impressed, the Assembly passed a bill in 1980 naming it the state song. But the Senate said no, alarmed by Jersey-negative lyrics that they couldn’t imagine people warbling at state fairs: “...this town rips the bones from your back/It’s a death trap, it’s a suicide rap/We gotta get out while we’re young.”

Other states have been more successful in finding musical representation. In fact, Tennessee has 10 official state songs, plus a bicentennial rap.

Some state tunes are well-known: “Georgia on My Mind,” for Georgia; “Rocky Mountain High,” for Colorado; and “You Are My Sunshine,” one of four Louisiana state songs.

The pro-Confederacy song, “Maryland, My Maryland,” which referred to President Abraham Lincoln as a “despot” and the Union as “Northern scum,” was revoked as the state’s official song in 2021 after decades of protest.

Of all the songs he knows, Weingart said, another tune titled, “I’m From New Jersey” by singer-songwriter John Gorka from Woodbridge Township, Middlesex County, gets his vote for state song.

“It’s clever and self-deprecating, which is true to New Jersey,” he said.

NJArts.net says there are hundreds of songs that have some relationship to New Jersey. Most of them likely wouldn’t make it as state songs, however, including:

“Big Thighs, NJ,” by Philadelphia band Low Cut Connie, which opens with a reference to appliance theft; Bloomfield, Essex County, musician Dave Kleiner’s “5 Governors in 8 Days,” the real-life account of only-in-Jersey political disarray; and “Catching on Fire,” a tale about singer Andrew Calhoun accidentally igniting his clothes while making cocoa in Long Branch in 1963.

Weingart doesn’t seem upset there’s no Jersey state song: “I’m reasonably sure a bureaucratic process to choose a song would pick one I don’t like.”

Cunningham agreed: “It’s almost a badge of honor that we don’t have a state song at this point.

“Face it: It’s another thing that makes Jersey unique.”

Staff writer Ryan Briggs contributed to this article.