If you're looking to sing your way through summer vacation, Nashville is the perfect destination.

Why it matters: Music City has been the end of the yellow brick road for generations of aspiring musicians. As such, it is loaded with must-see landmarks for any music lover.

The big picture: The New York Times infamously dubbed Nashville an "it city" in 2013. Things have not slowed down since.

• Celebrity chefs have set up shop, new attractions are taking shape and the famed corridor of honky-tonks on Lower Broadway keeps getting brighter.

The intrigue: Many of the best spots are hidden in plain sight, but our friends at Axios Nashville have helped us build the ultimate insider's guide to make your visit a success.

Go deeper: Why Nashville is New Orleans hospitality's new frontier

Whether you're in town for a weekend or a while, here's a list of Nashville spots — from the Bluebird to the Ryman — worth adding to your plans.

🐦 The Bluebird Cafe: Nashville has no shortage of amazing venues. But The Bluebird is special. The iconic 90-seat club where Taylor Swift and Garth Brooks were discovered is tucked away between a laundromat and a Verizon store.

• It's where the songwriters behind radio hits get to step into the spotlight in an incredibly intimate setting. And if you're lucky, you might catch an up-and-comer on the cusp of a record deal.

🎙️ RCA Studio B: A few miles away, you can tour the historic recording studio known as the "Home of 1,000 Hits," where Dolly Parton first recorded "I Will Always Love You."

🏛 The Parthenon: Originally built for the Tennessee Centennial Exposition in 1897, this replica of the famed temple in Greece is one of the most recognizable structures in the Athens of the South.

• Bonus: Swifties will want to linger in the surrounding Centennial Park to check out a bench dedicated to Swift. She wrote about visiting the park in her song "invisible string."

🎙 National Museum of African American Music: A sprawling tribute that traces the influence of Black artists across genres — including the Fisk Jubilee Singers, who earned Nashville its Music City nickname.

🎤 The Ryman Auditorium: The Mother Church of Country Music is the former home of the Grand Ole Opry. Sitting in the pews before the stage where Patsy Cline and Johnny Cash once performed is worth the price of a ticket on its own.

🎵 Country Music Hall of Fame: A must for any fan who has ever sung along with Reba, Patsy or Johnny.

A wall of concert posters advertising Elvis, Johnny Cash and others.

🔥 One souvenir to go: Every true Nashvillian has one thing in common — a poster from the legendary Hatch Show Print.

• The letterpress print shop has been in operation since 1879 and has produced posters for everyone from Elvis to Carly Rae Jepsen.
• The shop is now located in the lobby of the Hall of Fame. You can make your own merch during "block parties" or browse their stock of distinctive concert posters.

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🚔 NOPD partnered with Crystal Hot Sauce in a new effort to recruit officers through branded bottles in restaurants. (The Times-Picayune 🔒)

🏗️ The Lower 9th Ward is "facing an onslaught of catastrophic projects that could be more permanently damaging" than Hurricane Katrina, The Nation writes.

💔 A preschool classroom in Shreveport, Louisiana, is mourning the loss of a student who was among seven siblings fatally shot by their father. (AP)

🏡 Suleika Jaouad and husband, Jon Batiste, renovated a 200-year-old farmhouse. They jokingly refer to their aesthetic as Tunisiana. (Garden & Home home tour)

• Batiste also cut up with Ina Garten in a new episode of her cooking show. His mom's advice: Your red beans water should look like the swamp. (Facebook)

🦞 Remember the crawfish ice cream we told you about in Houston? The Washington Post has a video of how it's made. We just don't know about that, y'all.

📚 New Orleans author Michael Allen Zell's new book concludes his crime trilogy that's set in the city. (Offbeat)

• Read Chelsea' previous interview with him.

NASA's Artemis program hasn't slowed down any since the Artemis II astronauts splashed down earlier this month.

The big picture: The top four-fifths of the Space Launch System core stage rolled out from NASA's Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans Monday starting its trip to Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

• Specialized transporters carried the top four-fifths, which includes the liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen tanks, intertank and forward skirt, to NASA's Pegasus Barge, which will take it to Florida.
• The core stage construction, assembling and transportation is being coordinated with Boeing and L3Harris Technologies, NASA says.

What's next: Artemis III is set for a low-earth-orbit demonstration of docking procedures with lunar landers in mid-2027, ahead of Artemis IV in 2028, when astronauts will land on the moon.

More from Axios: New Orleans built key piece of NASA's Artemis II rocket