Cars and music go hand in hand. Many, many rock and roll songs are about, or feature the automobile. A large number of people spend more time listening to music in their cars than they do anywhere else.
The automobile and rock and roll go so cosily hand-in-hand that a kind of sub-market has evolved for “driving” CDs. While it isn’t really clear what qualifies a song for inclusion in one of these compilation projects (under which the shelves of motorway service stations positively groan) as the lyrical subject matter does vary widely, it remains clear that a huge number of songs have been written in which the car plays a major role. No popular music genre has a monopoly, and none is safe from the influence of cars, trucks, driving…Here are a few examples of the way that the internal combustion engine has colored the musical reflection of popular culture over the years.
Chuck Berry – ‘No Particular Place to Go’
The Beatles – ‘Drive My Car’
The Beach Boys – ‘Fun Fun Fun’
The Beach Boys – ‘Little Deuce Coupe’
Rose Royce – ‘Car Wash’
Johnny Cash – ‘One Piece At A Time’
Roy Orbison – ‘I Drove All Night’
Gary Numan – ‘Cars’
Bruce Springsteen – ‘Pink Cadillac’
Queen – ‘I'm In Love With My Car’
Meatloaf – ‘Paradise By The Dashboard Light’
Prince – ‘Little Red Corvette’
Snow Patrol – ‘Chasing Cars’
Rolling Stones – ‘Route 66’
Tom Robinson – ‘2-4-6-8 Motorway’
The Cars – ‘Drive’
Madness – ‘Driving In My Car’
Jimi Hendrix – ‘Crosstown Traffic’
Kraftwerk – ‘Autobahn’
Iggy Pop – ‘The Passenger’
Ministry – ‘Jesus Built My Hotrod’
Jonathan Richman – ‘Roadrunner’
Golden Earring – ‘Radar Love’
Deep Purple – ‘Highway Star’
Manic Street Preachers – ‘Motorcycle Emptiness’
There are many, many more, and each reader will probably find one or two amongst his or her own list of favorites that we have missed.
In the songs of The Beach Boys and their contemporaries, the car is a vital part of teenage life. It is a means of transport, a status symbol, an environment for conducting courtship rituals… Whether the vehicle driven is owned or borrowed from parents, these songs reflect a time when driving was just becoming a part of the domain of youth, giving them a kind of freedom formerly enjoyed only by the older generation.
In other cases, songs about the car seem almost designed to be played as an accompaniment to car journeys. The driving force of the bass and drum rhythm section chugs along in time to the beat of a revving engine. Golden Earring’s classic ‘Radar Love’ is the obvious example. Meanwhile, few self-respecting motorcyclists would listen to Steppenwolf’s ‘Born to be Wild’ without feeling the urge to don leather and tear up the street.
Kraftwerk, in their electronic epic ‘Autobahn’ (over 20 minutes in length) endeavored to paint a sonic picture of the automobile and its natural environment, the German autobahn highways. A little later, in America, Meatloaf’s car provided an unusual ambiance in ‘Paradise by the Dashboard Light’. An amusing blend of romance and youthful, hormonal desperation. However, your correspondent’s own personal favorite motor vehicle reference occurs in the incomparably crafted poetry of The Ramones. From the tragic-romance of ‘7-11’ comes the heart-rending: “Oncoming car ran out of control”. It crushed my baby and it crushed my soul”.
What more is there to say?
