To kick off the summer, the Free Press in May offered two dozen songs about cars and driving suggested as a warm-weather playlist — and invited readers to make suggestions for a second round. No one can count all the songs about driving and cars, so no list can be complete. We got dozens of suggestions, so for July 4, and the rest of the summer, here are 24 more ideas:
“On the Road Again” (Willie Nelson)
Some readers wondered how we could have left this one off. “Going places that I’ve never been, seeing things I may never see again” certainly fits the theme, and Nelson’s breezy style here is right for the season.
“On the Road Again” (Canned Heat)
Released in 1968 with elements ranging from blues to acid rock, Canned Heat provided a different take on the same idea.
“Highway Star” (Deep Purple)
Nobody’s gonna beat your car. “It’s gonna break the speed of sound” and it’s got “big fat tires and everything.” This rocker can get you down the road for a full six minutes!
“Radar Love” (Golden Earring)
If you’ve ever driven cross-country overnight, this is the tune you want as dawn starts to peek over the Eastern horizon. “Last car to pass, here I go” — complete with musical imitations of cars zooming by.
“Ol’ 55” (Tom Waits)
More driving at dawn, this time leaving a lover’s house. If you’ve ever done that, you know how Tom Waits must have felt when he penned this beauty, made more famous by the Eagles’ cover version. Waits frequently worked cars into his songs, and in 1974, he introduced “Ol’ 55” thusly: “This is about a ’55 Buick Roadmaster. I don’t know if there’s any real bona fide Buick owners out there tonight. But my goodness, that’s an automobile that I swear by. It’s a car that’s seriously as slick as deer guts on the doorknob.”
“Maybellene” (Chuck Berry)
Speaking of lovers … but she’s in the wrong car in the early rock standard. All respect to Chuck Berry for coining the term “motorvatin'” — “As I was motorvatin’ over the hill I saw Maybellene in a Coupé De Ville …”
As long as we’re on Chuck Berry, it’s well worth mentioning “No Particular Place to Go.” Hard to say if the kiss he steals during this song is from Maybellene.
“Trans Am” (Sammy Hagar)
We know Sammy Hagar can’t drive 55. In this fast rocker also known as “Highway Wonderland,” Hagar gives us a hint what he likes to drive. Fast. “Come on catch me if you can / In my Trans Am, Highway Wonderland.”
“Souped Up Ford” (Rory Gallagher)
Nothin’ but rock ‘n’ roll in this ode to putting the pedal to the metal. The famous criminal Clyde Barlow would agree with this line: “No highway cop’s gonna make me stop.” Just a few weeks before Bonnie and Clyde were ambushed in Texas, Barlow wrote to Henry Ford praising the power of his V8 engine: “While I still have got breath in my lungs I will tell you what a dandy car you make. I have drove Fords exclusively when I could get away with one.”
“Fast Car” (Tracy Chapman)
Tracy Chapman’s frequently covered 1988 melody surged back to popularity after she did a rare live performance with Luke Combs at February’s Grammy awards. Reader Karen Floyd of Charlotte, North Carolina, says you get bonus points “If you pull up to a red light singing that song, the car next to you is singing, too.”
Michigan musicians get in the act
Michigan artists often lean on their state’s carmaking legacy, including: “Detroit Muscle” by Ted Nugent with a roaring engine opening it up; “Makin’ Thunderbirds” by Bob Seger, about work on an assembly line, and “Hot Rod Lincoln,” written in the 1950s by country artist Charlie Ryan, covered by Commander Cody & His Lost Planet Airmen, a band formed in Ann Arbor.
Our automotive history influences artists from elsewhere, including the Dallas-based Old 97’s with “Buick City Complex” and Blondie with “Detroit 442.”
Folk rock legend influenced by Detroit
It’s a somewhat obscure bit of Detroit history that Canadian folk icon Joni Mitchell lived some of her early years as a musician in the Cass Corridor. She lived at the Verona apartments on East Ferry, a building that still stands. So give it up for “Big Yellow Taxi.”
“Mercedes Benz” (Janis Joplin)
A short “song of great social and political import” is a send-up of our consumer culture that can deliver a wry smile with the best of tunes.
“Somethin’ ‘Bout a Truck” (Kip Moore)
Millions of Americans agree with this country tune, apparently, with the Ford F-150, Chevrolet Silverado and Ram 1500 being the nation’s three bestselling vehicles.
“Fun, Fun, Fun” (Beach Boys)
The Beach Boys loved their cars, celebrating the car culture of California, where sheet metal doesn’t rust, everybody drives a convertible and long hair flies in the wind.
“The Distance” (Cake)
The Beach Boys were old-school rock, whereas alternative rock band Cake wrote about driving in circles. “It is a song about success and failure, and failure of success, really,” singer John McCrea said in 2019.
“Going Mobile” (The Who)
Reader Lou Hatty so likes this anthem that “as my coffin is being rolled down the aisle of the church to be loaded in the hearse to be taken to the graveyard, my family has been instructed, and has every intention of playing ‘Going Mobile.’ And I might add that if you’re on the freeway while this tune is playing, it’s extremely probable that your speed’s gonna increase a few mph.”
“Fuel” (Metallica)
A version of the song was the official NASCAR TV theme from 2001-03, and a version was used in an ad for Dodge performance cars. Not a song for your EV, though, or to play with young children in the car because, you know, they’ve never heard that language before.
“Car Wash” (Rose Royce)
You have to keep that ride clean, so here’s the perfect song for rolling through in neutral while the sprayers and brushes make it shine.
“Long May You Run” (Stills-Young Band)
Hippie icons Stephen Stills and Neil Young don’t fit the automotive stereotype, but the lyrics of this read like a tribute to a long-ago favorite car, and we’ll leave it there: “With your chrome heart shining in the sun, Long may you run.”
Source: Free Press
