Music Wall Art UK: 70 Maps, More Than Two-Thirds of Them British Acts
Music wall art UK means something specific here: 70 deeply researched music maps drawn in East Sussex, more than two-thirds of them British acts, laid out in the visual language of the London Underground diagram. Albums are stations, credited musicians are named lines, and every credit is read off the sleeve before it reaches the artwork.
I am not a print-on-demand shop with a licensing deal. I research each map myself, one album at a time, into a spreadsheet, and then draw it. This post is about what the British end of that catalogue actually contains and what the UK part of the description is doing.
The British Scenes the Catalogue Covers
This is the part I get asked about most, and it is easier to show than describe. Four clusters do most of the work.
| Scene | Maps in the catalogue |
|---|---|
| London | David Bowie, The Rolling Stones, The Kinks, The Who, Squeeze, Sex Pistols and PiL, The The, Hawkwind |
| Manchester and the North West | The Smiths, Johnny Marr, Morrissey, Joy Division, New Order, The Fall, Oasis, Noel Gallagher, Liam Gallagher, The Charlatans |
| Liverpool and the Wirral | The Beatles, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, Echo and the Bunnymen, OMD |
| Sussex and the South Coast | The Cure, Levellers, The Stranglers, plus the Lewes, Uckfield and Brighton and Hove Albion maps |
Beyond those four, there are the Welsh and Scottish maps, Manic Street Preachers, Simple Minds and Edwyn Collins among them, and a long list of one-city acts I have not squeezed into a table. The rest of the 70 are American, Australian, Canadian, Jamaican and Swedish, which is why I say more than two-thirds rather than all of it.
Why a British Catalogue Gets Drawn as a Tube Map
The London Underground diagram is a piece of British design that most people in this country can read without being taught. That is the entire reason it works for this job. Nobody needs a key to understand that a line continues, stops, or branches off.
I have written separately about where the diagram came from and how the grammar transfers to music, so I will not repeat it here: what is tube map art covers it properly. The short version is that the diagram was built to make a complicated network legible at a glance, and a forty-year recording career is a complicated network.
What "Researched in East Sussex" Actually Involves
It is a spreadsheet before it is a drawing. One column per album in release order, one row per credited musician, and a cell wherever that person appears on that record. Only once the grid is complete is anything drawn, because the shape of the print is determined by the data rather than by the layout.
The Charlatans' map is a fair example of what comes out of that. Sixteen stations from Some Friendly in 1990 to We Are Love in 2025, and a credit count per album that runs 6, 5, 7, 7, 10, 6, 10, 13, 8, 6, 5, 8, 18, 14, 19, 17. You Cross My Path in 2008 is the thinnest record on the sheet with five names. Different Days in 2017 is the busiest with nineteen, and among them are Johnny Marr, Paul Weller, Gillian Gilbert, the crime novelist Ian Rankin and the writer Sharon Horgan.
That arc is the argument for drawing it rather than listing it. A discography tells you the band made fourteen albums. The map tells you that the cast around them tripled.
Three Maps That Are About British Places, Not Bands
The same grammar works in a town. The Lewes map, drawn in 2020, plots an East Sussex market town as a network of landmarks and local quirks rather than a street plan. There is an Uckfield map on the same principle, and a Brighton and Hove Albion map that traces the club's history as lines rather than a table of seasons.
They sit slightly apart from the music catalogue, and they are the maps I get the warmest letters about, usually from people who have lived somewhere long enough to argue with my choice of stations.
The Charlatans print: each named line is one credited musician.Where the Work Has Ended Up
Two of the maps are held in archives rather than on walls. The David Bowie map is in the permanent collection at the V&A David Bowie Centre, V&A East Storehouse in London. The Bruce Springsteen map is held at the Bruce Springsteen Archives and Center for American Music at Monmouth University in New Jersey, which made contact in November 2020 and called it "truly amazing".
I was interviewed for The Guardian in June 2026. Beyond that, the responses I value most have come from the musicians themselves.
"Brilliant idea"
Billy Bragg
"Brilliant series"
Simon Rogers of The Fall
Sizes, Paper and Price
Every print is a Giclée on 230gsm premium textured matte fine art paper, archival and acid-free. A3 is 420 x 297 mm, unframed only, at £35. A2 is 594 x 420 mm, £45 unframed or £125 in a black wood frame. A1 is 841 x 594 mm, £65 unframed or £175 framed. Black is the only frame colour I offer.
There are three separate inch formats for the US, Canada and Australia, at 16 x 12 in, 24 x 18 in and 36 x 24 in, priced the same way. They are their own formats rather than conversions of the A sizes. The two Beatles maps and the Levellers map are A1 only.
My honest advice: A3 or A2 if the print is going up as a good-looking object, A1 if the person is going to stand in front of it and read the credits. On a dense map like The Fall or Hawkwind, that difference is real.
The Music Map Collection
Seventy deeply researched discography maps, albums as stations and every credited musician as a named line. A3, A2 or A1, unframed or in a black wood frame, from £35.
Music map art prints | Lewes and Uckfield tube map art prints
Related Reading
If you are weighing up where to order a print from in the first place, where to buy art prints online sets out what to check on paper weight, ink and Giclée claims before you order from anyone, me included. For the design history behind the format, what is tube map art is the one to read.
Questions I Get Asked
Is your music wall art made in the UK?
The research and the design are mine and both happen in East Sussex. Every map is drawn by hand from album credits, with no AI used at any stage. Printing is handled by local print partners rather than in my own studio.
Which British bands do you have maps of?
Around fifty of the 70, including David Bowie, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Smiths, Joy Division and New Order, Oasis, Pink Floyd, The Cure, Queen, Radiohead, Kate Bush, The Fall, Hawkwind, Manic Street Preachers, Arctic Monkeys and Simple Minds. The full list is in the collection.
What is not on the maps?
Studio albums carry the stations, so live albums, compilations, hits packages and singles collections are left off. A few maps carry a deliberate exception, and where they do I say so on that map's own page. A producer or engineer with no playing credit gets no line at all.
Do the maps show what each musician played on each track?
No, with one exception. The band maps show which albums each credited musician appears on. Only the Rolling Stones' Goats Head Soup album map goes to track level, because it covers a single record.
Are there maps of British places as well as bands?
Yes. Lewes, Uckfield and Brighton and Hove Albion Football Club, all drawn on the same principle as the music maps.
Can I get a map of a band you have not done?
Sometimes. New maps get added when the credits are documented well enough to research properly, which is the limiting factor rather than the drawing.
Seventy maps, researched one album at a time
Music map art prints from £35 in A3, A2 or A1. If you are buying for somebody and cannot work out which band they would want on the wall, a gift card lets them pick.
