Why 2025 is the Year to Visit Memphis, USA

Celebrate the King’s birthday in Memphis.

While the King may have left the building in 1977, Elvis Presley fans will make the pilgrimage to Graceland in January to celebrate what would have been his 90th birthday (8 to 11 January, 2025). The 23-room mansion – an immaculate 1970s time capsule and now a museum – and its sprawling grounds will host bands, movie screenings, a birthday cake cutting and the official proclamation of Elvis Presley Day on the 8th, his actual birthdate. All of it is expected to be met with a religious fervour not normally seen outside of a revival tent. This is, after all, Memphis, Tennessee, in America’s South. The city knows fervour.

Home of jazz, blues, rockabilly, gospel and Memphis soul, the city knows music, too. Joining the chorus is as easy as taking a trip down Beale Street, a three-kilometre strip that runs from the Mississippi River through Downtown to the east, where artists such as Louis Armstrong, Muddy Waters, Aretha Franklin and B.B. King ushered in the music of the Deep South. The latter also established B.B. King’s Blues Club, which still draws crowds with live music, plates of sticky ribs and pitchers of beer.

An easy walk from Beale Street’s steamy bars and clubs, Aloft Memphis Downtown is a newly opened 155-room boutique hotel with a restaurant, theatre room and rooftop bar hosting live bands. But melomaniacs should drop their bags and head straight to “the birthplace of rock ’n’ roll”, Sun Studio, where you can listen to original recordings of Elvis, Johnny Cash and Jerry Lee Lewis – and even record your own song. A 15-minute bus ride from Downtown, the Stax Museum of American Soul Music includes a replica of Studio A, where artists including Otis Redding and Booker T. & The M.G.’s helped define the sound of the ’60s.

Settle in at Evergreen Grill and they’ll fix you a plate of wings with guajillo glaze, a fried okra salad or a catfish and Cajun mayo sandwich, chased by a turtle brownie – a candied pecan bar with caramel sauce and ice-cream. Or head to Ember & Oak Prime in the city’s south for a sophisticated take on comfort food, such as crab cakes or a smoked butcher’s rack of bacon with fried green tomatoes on the side. It’s emblematic of what Memphis does so well: put an original spin on Southern tradition.

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