Do you live on Acacia Avenue or Pete Doherty Crescent? Honeysuckle Lane or Scissor Sisters Road? You’d better look out of the window to check that there aren’t men in overalls unscrewing the street signs right now. Because, lately, a particularly catchy strain of urban blight has been sweeping the world, with previously unremarkable roads, alleys and boulevards renamed after pop icons.

This summer, Street 13, on the eastern outskirts of Berlin, was reopened as Frank-Zappa-Strasse, commemorating the offbeat American rocker who died 14 years ago. The renaming was the result of a campaign by a local leftist arts collective, Orwo Haus, who said they admired Zappa because “he was without taboos, musically versatile, provocative and didn’t allow himself to be captured by capitalist enterprises”. They were probably also fond of his distinctive moustache.

Last year brought similar good news for reggae fans. The late Bob Marley need no longer wait in vain for his own street, having been awarded Bob Marley Boulevard, in Brooklyn. Zappa and Marley join a galaxy of stars, living and dead, who have already been deemed road-worthy. The late James Brown has a boulevard in his childhood home, Augusta, Georgia. Canada’s best-known female belter has Boulevard Céline Dion, in her home town, Charlemagne, Quebec. Ramones fans can now pogo around Joey Ramone Place, in New York City. And there’s our own Sir Cliff, who has gone one better and actually lives on Rua da Sir Cliff Richard, in Albufeira, Portugal.

Now whole bands are getting in on the act. Last year, an alley in Oklahoma City adopted the name of local band the Flaming Lips. The band’s lead singer, Wayne Coyne, has even suggested that fans give the alley a special makeover. “I could see people sneaking in during the middle of the night, doing graffiti art,” he announced. “I can see all kinds of strange things going on there.”

A few months earlier, the nu-metal band Korn made do with a grimy little stretch in their home city, Bakersfield, California. This was the idea of the manager of a neighbouring arena; the choice of an access road, rather than a fully fledged street, meant that they didn’t have to obtain approval from the city authorities. Displaying the calibre of wit usually reserved for hairdressing salons, they called it Korn Row.

Rather than sit back and wait for a spontaneous urban renaming ceremony, stars can take the charity route. Jay-Z now has his own thoroughfare in Nigeria, in return for the work the rapper has done to raise awareness of the African water crisis. And, thanks to his own generosity – a donation of $1m – Jon Bon Jovi has Bon Jovi Boulevard, in Houma, Louisiana, which houses some of the folks made homeless by Hurricane Katrina.

America is the leader of the pop renaming trend, but you can’t always count on the Land of the Free for musical justice. Requests to commemorate Jimi Hendrix with a street in his home city, Seattle, have fallen on deaf ears. While Britain lags behind America in terms of starry streets, things are surely set to change, as more pop stars die and more flower children and punk rockers reach the highest echelons of municipal planning. John Lennon airport, in Liverpool, may be only the beginning. Joe Strummer, the man who sang London’s Burning, surely deserves his own fire station at the very least.

There are certain names, of course, that just won’t work. Few citizens want to see Garbage Road or Megadeth Mews on their envelopes. But worse has happened: in 2001, the people of Anthrax Street, in Fayetteville, North Carolina, decided that they didn’t care for their address. The name had been approved five years earlier, after a suggestion by a local-authority employee who was apparently keen on the thrash-metal band Anthrax. It seems the residents noticed the negative connotations only when there was a fuss about terrorists sending the disease through the post. The nexy year, the Anthrax Street signs came down and it became Allegiance Avenue.

But the joke’s on Fayetteville again: Allegiance is the name of an old Australian metal band.

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