Whether you’re hitting the road with your old high school friends or visiting grandma with your parents, these are road trip songs that everyone can sing along to.
By: Tessa More, Contributing Writer
Summer is fast approaching, and with it comes the inevitable trips to visit college friends all across the country and globe. Fueled with gasoline and a car full of your favorite friends’ company, you’re ready to embark out on the open road, or are you? Do you have a playlist that will make the hours pass like minutes? Can your choice of music melt away what often winds up being dull highway scenery? If you choose the right blend of classics and current hits, your car ride can transcend its simple purpose of getting from one place to another.
There are numerous factors that go into making for a belt-at-the-top-of-your-lungs road trip song. Songs featuring the subject of a road trip or driving in general will keep any car crew engaged. Classics like Highway to Hell, Born to Run, I Would Walk 500 Miles, The Distance>/em> and Dashboard satisfy the need to relate to being in a car for hours on end. And when your co-pilot inevitably falls asleep, how can you resist blasting Tear In My Heart while running over pothole after pothole to wake them?
Another important aspect is actability: how dramatic can you sing and dance within the confines of your Toyota Prius? Great songs to sing at the top of your lungs while gesturing lavishly include All Star, Bohemian Rhapsody (don’t we all dream to recreate the car scene in Wayne’s World), The Climb, Before He Cheats, Benny and the Jets, Don’t Trust Me, Bad Religion and the song of our generation: Fergalicious.
Most importantly, everyone on the road trip needs to have a general knowledge of lyrics so they’ll be able to accurately sing the stories and not feel ostracized. Drops of Jupiter, Don’t Stop Believin’, I Write Sins Not Tragedies, Sweet Caroline, Always Alright or Welcome to the Black Parade are car classics that don’t require using AZ Lyrics. If need be, print out the lyrics to the songs you’re most nervous about your Sedan squad knowing. Billy Joel’s We Didn’t Start the Fire often keeps everyone on their toes with each verse’s alliteration of lyrics.
Now if you’re like me, your party-bus posse tunes in to modern rap, so throw in Ultralight Beam, iSpy, Coast Is Clear, Gold Digger, It Wasn’t Me, Chance the Rapper’s Angels and All Night. If the whiteness of your gasoline gang is unanimous, you might want to refrain from passing out lyrics for these ones.
If you’re taking this trip with your significant other, or someone you have romantic hopes for, you can always subtly drop Nat King Cole’s L-O-V-E, Nelly Furtado’s Promiscuous, Side To Side, Take Me Out, What Do You Mean?, Kendrick’s LOVE. and Ke$ha’s Your Love Is My Drug. If you’re taking the trip with platonic pals whom you have no interest in getting with, you can still play these—just don’t stare directly into their soul while belting them at the top of your lungs. They might get the wrong impression, and you might crash.
Now if this seems like a lot of songs to keep track of, lucky for you there’s a Spotify playlist where all these songs (and many other hits old and new) reside happily together: “Buzzsaw Best Roadtrip Jams”, give it a listen, and safe travels! https://open.spotify.com/user/1251915115/playlist/4q4XZD5WXWLkO0oW8ki69v
Tessa More is a sophomore Journalism major who thinks Drops of Jupiter is the greatest love song of all time. You can reach them at