The 50 Best Road-Trip Songs

The song begins with a revving motor, squealing tires and a drum fill that Dave Grohl hijacked a decade later for the intro to Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” Then the Gap Band hit the road for this Number One R&B hit, with Charlie Wilson singing about the woman who sent him down the road to pick up a strawberry soda before she took off. The bass groove is so mighty, there’s nothing to do but get in the car and follow her.

“Thinking about the times you drove in my car/Thinking that I might have drove you too far,” Eric Clapton sings while Cream’s high-performance engine purrs. This song was written by Clapton and his pal George Harrison; a drunk Ringo Starr contributed the lyric about swans in the park. The song got its inscrutable title because Harrison’s handwriting was so bad, Clapton misread his scrawled “bridge” as “Badge.”

The lyrics are about watching a woman dancing alone: she is out of reach but just over the horizon. Singer Peso Pluma rode shotgun with the Mexican group Eslabon Armado for this international smash and made you feel the song’s learning, no matter what language you speak. But it’s the horn riff— a catchy, relentless sierreño part—that makes you step on the accelerator.

On her debut single, Missy Elliott and producer Timbaland souped up Ann Peebles’ 1973 soul classic and created that hypnotic state where the rain puts the whole world out of focus and the windshield wipers on your car slap out a slurry rhythm. “Beep beep, who got the keys to the Jeep?” she asked. Then she provided the only answer we’re ever going to get: “Vrrrrrrroooom.”

The greatest Supremes single that wasn’t actually sung by the Supremes came from this South Carolina trio after they relocated to the United Kingdom. It begins with crashing piano chords sounding the death knell for a relationship and then adds horns, drum fills, and cries of despair, barreling through the five stages of grief in under three minutes.

Originally a B-side, this song became a classic on the strength of great honky-tonk piano from Ray Manzarek and a classic harmonica part from guest John Sebastian (of the Lovin’ Spoonful). Good driving advice: “Keep your eyes on the road, your hand upon the wheel.” Bad driving advice: “Woke up this morning and got myself a beer.” Weird driving advice: “You gotta beep a gunk a chucha, honk-konk, konk, kadanta.”

Techno pioneers Juan Atkins and Rick Davis made a funky Detroit classic, crossing Kraftwerk with Funkadelic: Deep electrogroove for when you want driving down the street to feel like you’re steering a spaceship in a videogame, surrounded by pixelated stars and other cosmic cars.

A novelty country song performed under a pseudonym by advertising man Bill Fries, putting the hammer down on CB radio slang, telling the story of a group of truckers, driving across the country, ignoring the speed limit, a roadblock, and even a police helicopter (that’s a “bear in the air” to you). This was the first single the techno musician Moby ever bought; he took it home when he was ten years old and listened to it over and over for two hours straight.

Ralf Hütter of electronic rock pioneers Kraftwerk explained to Rolling Stone in 1975 why the lyrics of their tribute to Germany’s national highway system aren’t in English: “the German language, like our own rhythms, is more machinelike, more abrupt.” The three-minute version became their first pop hit, but you need the 22-minute version for the full synthesizer soundscape of a roadtrip.

Brian Kelley and Tyler Hubbard began their career as Florida Georgia Line with a hit so humongous that it established the bro-country genre. They were singing a sunny melody to a woman with “long tanned legs,” telling her in the chorus that “you make me wanna roll my windows down and cruise.” And in fact, it’s scientifically impossible to play this song with your windows up.

Chris Collingwood wrote a power-pop song so catchy, it forced Adam Schlesinger to start a band with him. A few months later, “Radiation Vibe” kicked off Fountains of Wayne’s first album and became their debut single. It’s got lyrics stuffed with inside jokes and a guitar riff that just won’t quit. Debut singles often make good road-trip songs: bands with something to prove put their right foot down and see how fast they can go.

Boygenius’s career feels like three best friends on an extended road trip together, singing “Always an angel, never a god” at the top of their lungs with the sunroof down. Part of the group’s genius is that when you sing along, you feel like you’re along for that ride with them. Best lyric here about high-velocity music: “Drag racing through the canyon / Singing ‘Boys Don’t Cry.’”

When Nelly raps, he exudes confidence, but when he croons, he shows some vulnerability, asking “Why must I live this way?” (The answer is “it must be the money,” but he doesn’t seem satisfied with that.) His vibe of low-speed cruising past the club after dark translates well to high-velocity motoring past the truck stop in daylight: in both cases, the ride is more important than the destination. He knew it, too — that’s why the video for this song was a tribute to the ultimate road-trip movie, Smokey and the Bandit.

Giorgio Moroder made a concept album with Donna Summer, I Remember Yesterday, where each song evoked a different decade and the closing track was meant to sound like the future. Moroder, who wanted to make something that could be a hit in the 21st century, succeeded beyond his wildest dreams: a rushing synth sound that basically invented EDM and feels like an AC blast of cold freon in your face while you drive on hot asphalt.

Yeah, Sniff ’n’ the Tears might be the worst band name ever, but “Driver’s Seat” was so undeniable, it overcame that. The song began with a riff, which singer Paul Roberts took out of the song when he decided it sounded like a rip-off of another song. What was left behind was the motor of “Driver’s Seat”: an acoustic guitar rhythm that never quit, even as it swerved around a Moog solo and the fragmented alienation of the lyrics.

Before Atlanta was the capital of the Dirty South, it had an electrofunk scene of its own, and its flagship act was the S.O.S. Band. The group’s signature hit had relentless chickenscratch guitar, a powerhouse bassline that sometimes snapped into a double-time tempo, and the sexy, androgynous yowl of singer Mary Davis. It was a perfect club jam — but sometimes the interstate becomes your dancefloor.

If a highway can be a metaphor for an intense drug trip, then drugs can also be a metaphor for an intense road trip. “Blue Highway” delivers on both ends of the deal, features some epic guitar from Steve Stevens, and goes around the world in the five minutes so that Billy Idol can wake up in the U.S.A. But it’s Idol’s greatest shoulda-been-a-single because of its unexpectedly empathic bottom line: he’s “so glad that you’re living.”

Let’s get stupid! When this irresistible hip-hop jam came out, radio stations couldn’t figure out how to handle the line “I once got busy in a Burger King bathroom”: while some stations bleeped “got busy” because it was deemed too crude, others edited “Burger King” because it was unauthorized product placement. Jam out to the uncensored original, featuring jokes about lumpy oatmeal and a bass groove that’ll make you look like you’re having “a fit or a convulsion.”

Mexican rock band Café Tacuba knew their fifth album was an instant road-trip classic: it’s not an accident that they called it Cuatro Caminos (that’s “Four Roads,” English speakers). As the band revs up, Rubén Albarrán sings about how best to reach the eyes and ears of the person he’s singing to: he needs to make the journey to where they are.

The best thing about Noah Baumbach’s overworked film version of White Noise was the LCD Soundsystem track that played for seven minutes over the credits while the movie’s characters danced in a supermarket: James Murphy sings about consumerism and the afterlife while the song hurtles forward, taking us into the future just a little faster than we planned.

An ode to driving at night, recorded in Berlin with coproducer David Bowie on piano. Pop said in 2016 that the song “was partly written about the fact I’d been riding around North America and Europe in David’s car ad infinitum. I didn’t have a driver’s license or a vehicle.” Was Pop the passenger in this lyric, giving the steering wheel to the more famous Bowie, or was Bowie the passenger, getting to ride along with Pop and his artistic cred? Either way, they both wanted control of the car’s stereo.

Compton rapper Coolio broke through with this exuberant fantasy about driving from the hood to a sunny Shangri-La. He rapped about the utopia at the end of the road — a place where skin color doesn’t matter, where he doesn’t have to worry about drive-by shootings, where his plate of beans and rice has some steak on it — but it’s clear that what he actually cares about is the journey. On the road, you can just keep rolling, chanting “slide, slide, slippity-slide.”

Dennis Coffey, formerly a guitarist in the Motown house band, stepped out and scored a top-ten instrumental hit, a groove with a great central riff and an extended percussion breakdown. The track had an extraordinarily long afterlife: it became a go-to breakbeat for hip-hop DJs (alongside staples like the Incredible Bongo Band’s “Apache”) and got sampled by artists ranging from Public Enemy to Queen Latifah. “I didn’t write it as a dance record,” Coffey said, “it just became one.”

The Canadian Cochrane was formerly lead singer of Red Rider, best known in the States for their song “Lunatic Fringe.” “Life is a highway” isn’t a subtle metaphor, but when you’re on the open road, there’s nothing better than shouting the title along with Cochrane while the guitar plays a telegraph message telling you to drive faster and the harmonica chugs out a rhythm telling you listen to the guitar.

“It’s kind of a punch: aggressive, confrontational, icy, in-your-face,” Charli XCX said of this single. It’s also an all-time solipsistic jam, the song you want to hear on the dancefloor when you know everybody is staring at you: “It’s okay to admit you’re jealous of me,” she sings. That also makes it the song you want to play loudly when you know everybody’s checking out your car.

“Roundabout” was written by Jon Anderson and Steve Howe on a Yes promo tour in Scotland: as they drove between cities, there were an unusual number of roundabouts (which you may know better as “traffic circles”). Through the song’s eight minutes, the band keeps merging into traffic, going around familiar repeating circles before spinning off in new directions. “Call it morning driving,” Anderson sings.

Covering a song written by Eddy Grant, the Clash turned up their guitars until they screamed. The lyrics are about running away from the police after committing a murder, but you can also play it loud after blowing through a speed trap. Chanting the days of the week and pleading “won’t you help me find the speed I lack?” Mick Jones sang like a man who knew he could never ever slow down again.

Life behind the wheel of a car was Springsteen’s central metaphor for a long time, even if the meaning was malleable: the road could be freedom, or a life’s work, or a one-way trip to the graveyard. On this hypnotic eight-minute ballad, flavored with Van Morrison–style incantations, the road is the vehicle for true love and devotion: “I swear I’d drive all night again,” he sings, “just to buy you some shoes.”

DeVaughn was a government employee working as a drafting technician when he booked a session at Omega Sound in Philadelphia, walking in with a song and the money to cover its recording. The soulful single that resulted sounded like a lost Curtis Mayfield classic: a stripped-down groove urging humility and acceptance, whether you’re driving the car of your dreams with the sunroof down or pounding the pavement.

This hard-rock anthem was written by Mars Bonfire, the brother of Steppenwolf’s drummer, because when he first came to Hollywood, he didn’t have a car or a motorcycle: “All I could do was walk around,” he said. When he scraped together enough money for a used Ford Falcon and hit the road, that newfound freedom promptly inspired the song’s opening lines: “Get your motor runnin’ / Head out on the highway.”

In the admittedly narrow category of “songs with lyrics about messages you see on the road,” “Dead Fox” (featuring a chorus often spotted on the back of trucks, “If you can’t see me, I can’t see you”) beats out Meat Loaf’s 1994 single “Objects in the Rear View Mirror May Appear Closer Than They Are.” Barnett sings about her ambivalence toward late-stage capitalism, wondering if an ill-timed sneeze could make her swerve into a collision with a truck, and somehow makes it rock.

The very definition of wholesome teenage hedonism: the girl who borrows her father’s car to go to the library but cruises to the hamburger stand with the radio blasting. Is she driving so fast that she “makes the Indy 500 look like a Roman chariot race”? Why, yes she is. Technically, the song is about her punishment—Daddy takes the T-Bird away—but with the Chuck Berry guitar riffs and the five-part harmonies in full effect, the song is a celebration of her driving skill and her swagger.

Whether your intoxicant of choice is alcohol, indo, or just the deep G-Funk, this is a track about the pleasures of a road trip that never leaves your neighborhood: cruising with your friends, chilling, putting the everyday drama in your rear-view mirror. Rapping with a California drawl, Snoop makes up stories about his life in Compton but repeatedly says two words that seem 100% believable: “laid back.”

“One of the great things about L.A.,” Petty said, “is that you can be all alone in your car—alone and moving fast. It’s very therapeutic.” This song evokes that feeling, both through the lyrics about hitting cruise control and singing along with Del Shannon’s “Runaway,” and through the two-minute Mike Campbell guitar solo that concludes the song. That solo feels like the moment when you get through a traffic jam and finally hit the gas.

“Relax” was a perfect pop provocation: in England it got banned by the BBC for being too sexual, and all over the world it got people wearing “FRANKIE SAY RELAX” T-shirts. But none of it would have happened without genius producer Trevor Horn, who spent six weeks recording multiple versions (most of them without the band), until the single ended up with an airbrushed pearlescent paint job, like a car that’s so polished you’d swear it was going faster.

Panama: a man, a plan, a canal, a hat, a stripper, a car. David Lee Roth can roll with any of them, as long as they’re moving fast enough to match Eddie Van Halen’s hot-shoe guitar. The song includes a classic spoken interlude about driving on a hot night and having a passenger who reaches between your legs and eases the seat back, but it can’t beat the concision of these four words: “Model citizen / zero discipline.”

Prince’s best ballad comes at the end of his masterwork double album Sign “O” the Times: an exquisite slow jam, expressing his utter devotion to a lover, their vulnerability when they lie next to other, and how when they make love, angels above them are so happy for them that they bathe the couple in tears of joy. He testifies in falsetto, “you could burn up my clothes/Smash up my ride” — and then reconsiders, deadpanning, “Well, maybe not the ride.” Even total erotic bliss isn’t worth sacrificing his wheels for.

Bon Scott howls and Angus Young plays guitar like there’s hellhounds on his trail, but the hero of this track is drummer Paul Rudd: unhurried and perfectly in the groove, he plays like a man who’s early for a bus. AC/DC don’t actually seem to have strong beliefs on the existence of Heaven and Hell, so they do their best to have a good time on Earth, cruising down a road with no stop signs or speed limit.

This single pulls into the passing lane, fueled by lyrical virtuosity, a hot Isley Brothers sample, and a simple message in the chorus: “I love myself.” Lamar said it was hard for him to say that lyric, but he wrote it because he knew he would have to perform the song every night when he went on tour. “That’s a psychological trick I wanted to play on myself,” he said. “Every time I’m in a weird mood or something goes on at home that I can’t handle, I’ve got to perform it anyway.”

Rodrigo decides to hook up with an ex, knowing that she’ll regret it afterwards. “Now I’m gettin’ in the car, wreckin’ all my plans/I know I should stop, but I can’t,” she sings. The music grooves like the Cars, and the best part of her night happens in the car while she’s driving over to his place: 97% anticipation, 3% the frisson of intentionally making a mistake. If she could just stay in her vehicle, it’d be the perfect road trip.

Thirty-five years before Luke Combs took her song for a ride, Tracy Chapman released her first single, with a heartbreaking lyric about the everyday life of working in a convenience store and living in a shelter. While an acoustic guitar figure repeats, the protagonist has dreams of a better life that probably won’t ever come true—but when the drums play, she can think about her partner’s car, remember how good it felt to ride in it at high speed, and fantasize about escaping.

Cars in the United States weren’t even legally required to have seat belts until 1968, so Chuck Berry made the most of their novelty, telling a funny story about a seduction that was thwarted when he couldn’t unfasten the safety belt on his date. (Yeah, it may have been a metaphor.) When that happens, he calls his car a “calaboose”—old-time slang for a prison—but he plays a raucous guitar solo like a man who just wants to keep driving.

“I’m taking a ride with my best friend,” Dave Gahan sings, preparing to break society’s rules while synthesized doom cascades around him. The drum sounds were sampled from Led Zeppelin’s world-ending “When the Levee Breaks” and the choral vocals were sampled from Carl Orff’s equally apocalyptic 1937 composition Carmina Burana. It’s a song made for driving at high speed while the world is falling apart, which makes it a song for today.

How badly did Megan Thee Stallion want this remix to come out? When her label tried to block it, she took them to court for emergency relief. Luckily for all of us, she won. In the middle of a pandemic, rolling up to a raucous party was more of a fantasy than usual, but BTS (with Megan as their eighth member) had so much joy and bounce, driving with this song playing loud could make even rolling up to curbside delivery feel like a party.

An industrial-age manifesto: the car is not a symbol of freedom, the car is not a symbol of good times, the car is just an extension of yourself. So why would Gary Numan ever leave it? “Will you visit me please if I open my door?” he asks. Over half of this pioneering synth-pop song is an instrumental outro, just to give you some extra time to mind-meld with your dashboard.

Picture the scene in the teen comedy where the dirtbags peel into the high school’s parking lot, doing doughnuts and making everyone else scatter while a greasy pop-punk song blasts out of their car windows: yeah, “My Own Worst Enemy” is what’s playing on the soundtrack and you’re singing along to “Tell me whyyyyy the car is in the front yard.” Last year, Lit guitarist Jeremy Popoff said, “Ironically, now I live out in the country in Tennessee, we just park our cars in the front yard.”

There’s nothing to propel you into the future like leaving the scene of a bad breakup. The day after Adele split with the older man she had been dating for the past year, she was in the studio, sobbing and working on “Rolling in the Deep.” “I was absolutely devastated,” she told Rolling Stone. The raw sorrow in her voice when she sings “we could have had it all” is more powerful than diesel fuel.

Rejected first drafts: Barry Hay, singer/lyricist for the Dutch band Golden Earring, said his original opening line for this song was “I’m sitting in a bathtub.” Luckily, he wrote a second draft about a couple with a psychic connection: the guy drives to see his girl in the middle of the night when he gets the ESP message that she’s lusting after him. It has an ambiguous ending that might be tragic or orgasmic, some excellent drum fills, and a chugging bassline that makes the kilometers fly by.

“Ninety miles an hour, girl, is the speed I drive,” Hendrix sang, warning away a girl who might slow him down. While Electric Ladyland, the third and final Jimi Hendrix Experience album, had a shifting cast of musicians, “Crosstown Traffic” featured all three members of the Experience locked in together: Noel Redding on bass, Mitch Mitchell on drums, and Hendrix on vocals, guitar, and improvised kazoo (he used a comb and a piece of paper). Dave Mason of Traffic contributed the high-pitched backing vocals. The result was as unstoppable as Furiosa’s War Rig in Mad Max: Fury Road.

Jonathan Richman’s lyrics are about loving convenience stores and “modern moonlight” and driving on Massachusetts highways late at night with rock music blasting in your car. “The highway is your girlfriend as you go by quick,” he sings. The music, mostly two throbbing chords, will make you love those things too: if you don’t live anywhere near Richman’s beloved Route 128, you can play this song late at night on your local turnpike or freeway. A road trip on a ring road brings you back where you started, but if you play the right song, you change on the way.