For car fans, there are few pleasures greater than embarking on the perfect road trip, and one of the most essential things that any good road trip needs is a good soundtrack to go along with it.
Even if you’re not much of a car person and you’re more into your music, any true record aficionado can’t survive without a playlist of songs for every situation. You’ve got your party playlist, your secret sexy-time playlist (we’ve all got one), so how about some suggestions for the perfect driving playlist?
Inspired by a recent road trip of our own, from pop to punk, roots to rock and everything in between, here’s the Car Keys list of the greatest albums and their standout songs to drive to.
7. Tom Petty - Full Moon Fever
One of Tom Petty’s cheesiest records, his first official record away from The Heartbreakers is still an absolute hoot nonetheless, particularly for when you’ve got a couple of friends in tow.
Produced and co-written by Jeff Lynne of Electric Light Orchestra fame, ‘Full Moon Fever’ packs more hooks than a pirate convention, and irresistible choruses from the likes of ‘Free Fallin’ make the album an essential road trip jewel.
Loaded with some of Petty’s best-known songs like the defiant ‘I Won’t Back Down’ and ‘Running Down A Dream’, it’s undeniably glossy, undeniably 80s and undeniably enjoyable cruising down the motorway.
6. The Band - Music from Big Pink
The road trip has been an essential part of the American identity and the identity of any who buy into the mythos, and leave it to The Band, with their classic blend of roots-rock Americana to make any road feel like Route 66.
Although the majority of their members were Canadians, the distinctive blend of country, rock, folk and soul on debut album ‘Music from the Big Pink’ expertly chronicles everything great about American history and tradition.
The standout track is the iconic ‘The Weight’, which tells the story of a traveller’s experiences arriving and departing a town called Nazareth. Musically and thematically than many of its fellow classic rock staples, ‘The Weight’ also famously featured on what’s arguably the greatest road trip film of all time, 1969’s Easy Rider.
Sophomore album ‘The Band’ is perhaps even more musically accomplished and more heavily laden with American folklore and mythology, but ‘Music from Big Pink’s laid back attitude makes it one of the best ways to pass a long, lonely road trip.
5. Wilco - Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
Complex and frighteningly catchy; lyrically sophisticated and provocative; noisy and yet serene, Wilco’s ‘Yankee Hotel Foxtrot’ is magnificent in headphones, even better in your car.
Although it’s not the most immediately accessible album on this list, tracks like opener ‘I Am Trying to Break Your Heart’ and ‘Ashes of American Flags’ is filled with gripping darkness and an intensity that gets richer the harder you listen.
Stick it on for an early-morning Sunday coastal drive or when commuting home in the rain and ‘Yankee Hotel Foxtrot’ will make you swear down that you’re driving through a movie scene. Trust us on this one.
4. Bruce Springsteen - Born to Run
A road trip album if ever there was one, there’s absolutely no way that any list of the best driving records that doesn’t include ‘Born to Run’ can be taken seriously.
The Boss’ classic ode to freeway escapism, from the opening harmonica blasts of ‘Thunder Road’ to the chrome-wheeled highway anthem of the title track, ‘Born to Run’ is an instant classic with some of recorded music’s best moments.
Most of Springsteen’s catalogue is great for driving to (see the achingly spare vignettes of ‘Nebraska’ or hit machine ‘Born in the USA’), but ‘Born to Run’ is still the most epic and still the best.
3. The Stooges - Fun House
The second album from proto-punk wizards The Stooges, Fun House is arguably the band’s best cut and is easily one of the greatest driving albums of all time, transforming any road into a vast, wailing canvas of petroleum-spattered lust and danger.
Greasy, snarling and violent opener ‘Down on the Street’ sets the tone for the whole experience, practically grabbing you by the scruff of the neck and demanding you to grab a bottle of something strong, fire up your big-block V8 and kick a priest square in the teeth.
There’s enough out there about The Stooges and their influence, so we’ll spare you the rhetoric. Still, ‘Fun House’ is one of those albums with the potential to get under your skin, to breed that certain air of noble contempt that becomes both origin and purpose of every proudly-extended middle finger.
No matter who you are, where you come from or what you drive, ‘Fun House’ will stoke that animal soul, that crude, blue collar primitiveness that lurks in the heart of every petrolhead the world over.
2. Kraftwerk - Autobahn
Although it was the album to put Kraftwerk on the map back in 1974, the definitive musical tribute to the motorway was the group’s fourth record after releasing three albums of purely instrumental, experimental music.
Channelling the contagious American pop of The Beach Boys but with their own uniquely German twist, the album is still as deliriously tuneful as it was in the 70s, with its throbbing, blooming slice of retro-futuristic Krautrock.
The title track was recorded to capture the feeling of a car journey along the A 555 from Koln to Bonn, and was supposedly prompted after Ralf Hutter hung a tape recorder outside the window of his car to record traffic.
It’s certainly an album best saved for occasions when the notion takes you, but the original motorway-themed record still manages to turn a dreary night-time commute into a synth-washed, neon adventure. Wir fahren, fahren, fahren indeed.
1. Deep Purple - Machine Head
Killer riffs, Jon Lord’s inimitable Hammond-thrashing and an all-out pedal to the metal performance from guitar maestro Ritchie Blackmore, Deep Purple’s Machine Head is perhaps the ultimate example of the best driving album ever committed to tape.
Opening with the iconic ‘Highway Star’, probably the best summation of everything that was great about Deep Purple, the track was even named the greatest driving song of all time by the Top Gear boys.
Clad in leather and studded bracelets, lyrics about V8 engines and fat tyres are sure to please any automotive fan, while the driving bass and Bach-inspired guitar solos will turn any jaunt up the M1 into a testosterone-fuelled quest.
Shifting up the gears at lightning speed, each member was at the top of their game for ‘Machine Head’, with surging grooves and pyrotechnic performances that can shoot you from 0-62 quicker than you can say “Smoke on the Water”.
The best driving music of all time? We think so, but why not let us know what you reckon the best driving songs are by joining the discussion on Facebook or on Twitter?
