Songs That Make You Want to Get in Your Car and Drive Fast
An end-of-summer mix tape
“Passed him like he was sitting still!” my dad would say with a chuckle when we passed a car, abandoned on the shoulder. We’d roll our eyes in the backseat.
“It was sitting still, Dad,” we’d say, but it never phased him.
“We blew his doors off, kids,” he’d say when he got out from behind a slow-moving car, “Left him in the dust!”
“Now let’s put the pedal to the metal!” he’d say like his own commentator when traffic cleared.
Dad used to race his brother’s car in high school and college on the dirt track. I think he liked to pretend he was still on the racetrack when he got on the highway. In Dallas, it seemed like every other hour was, a “rush hour” crawl, so if you hit one of those lucky times when you could actually go the speed limit, you had to live it up while it lasted.
Dad never took life too seriously. He loved to find reasons to laugh. He did take our lives very seriously, though. He was a very safe driver and we never got into so much as a fender-bender when he was at the wheel.
But deep down he loved open roads — and speed.
His college roommate used to say, “This is a song that makes you want to get in your car and drive fast.” Old rock songs would come on the radio and Dad would repeat that line with a twinkle in his eye.
I love to be behind the wheel, too. A drive with beautiful scenery, a pothole-free lane, and a decent speed limit is my happy place. A good soundtrack makes the hours fly by to a much-awaited destination.
I put together some of my favorite songs for long drives. Some of these songs we caught this year on our summer road trip to the Black Sea, some are what my friends have affectionately labeled “Euro-trash,” some are produced or sung by Romanians—and others are older because I still enjoy songs 10+ years after they’ve gone out of style.
So listen to my mix tape and enjoy (or throw popcorn); watch out for potholes and speed traps… and don’t do anything that Dad wouldn’t do.
Drive— Clean Bandit & Topic
Driving all night? So is Clean Bandit! This song has a great beat to keep you up while you’re on those dark curvy Transylvanian roads that never seem to have any lights or endings.
The only things to interrupt the hours of pitch-black darkness are the occasional car full of crazy people who are also on the road at three in the morning blinding you with their oncoming headlights, a gas-station coffee stop, this^ song, and vampires. Just kidding (about one of these things).
Drifting — Tiesto
A fresh song that came out just in time for summer. It was played over every beach in Romania this year. Makes you want to dance, float on a wave, or burn up an open road.
Dj Andi feat. Stella — Happiness
Roll down the window and listen to the sound of happiness. We had an old-fashioned stick of music that we’d plug into our car’s stereo and this song was on it. It was my daughter’s favorite and we’d play it every year on summer vacation. The stick finally wore out after years of use — and so did our car.
This song is Romanian-made and incredibly difficult to search for on YouTube, but I finally found it.
Animals — Martin Garrix
It sounds like a swarm of bees, a ticking clock, that noise a car makes when you forget your keys in the ignition, someone screaming off-set, an arcade game, then it says some bad words and leaves. Perfect, right?
I thought the song’s one line was “Faa-Wha AHHHH” But then when I Shazamed it and found out the title of the song was Animals, I came up with “FOCUS. On ANIMALS!!” But apparently, that’s still wrong.
I’m bad at hearing lyrics even when people aren’t screaming them. In fact, when I moved overseas, my new friends thought I would be a song-lyric expert. “But it’s in English,” they’d say when they asked what a song meant. I would just shrug, listen hard, and try to make something up on the spot like AI.
I thought this song was hilarious and set it as my ringtone when I worked in orphan care. My brother actively loved it, my friends also thought it was hilarious but in a “are you okay?” kind of way, and the ladies I worked with jumped out of their skin every time my phone went off until I felt bad and changed my ringtone.
Supergirl — Anna Naklab feat. Alle Farben & YOUNOTUS
Anna Naklab’s 2015 cover actually outsold the original in the artists’ home country of Germany. This song has a lot of danceable, drivable energy to it.
You feel like maybe you could actually fly.
Kryptonite — 3 Doors Down
Like Oscar Rhea, I’m usually years behind in my music taste. But, I loved this song from the time it came out. I realize most have moved past it now, but here I still am. It’s a great song to blast out on a long stretch of road.
Apparently, the band's drummer, Brad Arnold, wrote this song when he was 15 in math class. I always wondered why we all had to do upper math when we had calculators and other people who liked math to do it for us. But I guess math period was an extra opportunity to write poetry and I just missed that memo.
Maybe if I’d used math class to write like Brad, I would be a famous author by now and not writing on Medium.
Love Is Gone — Vanotek
After trying to find this song, and YouTube (wrongly) handing me half a dozen versions of Slander’s or David Guetta’s songs by the same name, I dug deeper (hello Shazam) and found out that Vanotek is a Moldovan-Romanian record producer. Small world, right? I guess that’s why this song is on the radio so much here but YouTube is like what?
This upbeat song is a perfect addition to a mixtape when your destination is the Black Sea. Or, any other destination.
Castle on the Hill — Ed Sheeran
Castle on the Hill is basically upbeat nostalgia. It’s like: “Yeah, remember when we were young and had energy?” But no one is crying, yet.
Sometimes I can’t believe that I live in a country where there are real castles and fortresses dotting the countryside. Some are in ruins and some are tourist attractions. Monuments to so many stories long forgotten.
Miles From Nowhere — Cat Stevens
When I was a young child, my parents played Tea for the Tillerman on our long family road trips. My older sister and I loved this cassette tape.
Then Cat Stevens kind of jumped off the deep end about the time my 6-year-old sister started belting out lyrics about some girl’s pants dropping in the sand.
All of a sudden, my parents were having a hard time consistently finding the tape and we suffered through listening to normal kid-music crap like “She’s Coming Around the Mountain,” instead.
Other honorable mentions:
I Was Made for Lovin’ You — Oliver Heldens
Riptide — Vance Joy
Falling Down — Emin Nilsen & Cotneus
Bang My Head — David Guetta feat. Sia & Fetty Wap
Coffee Shop — Sunnery James & Ryan Marciano feat. Kes Kross
Fast Car — Jonas Blue ft. Dakota
I hope you enjoyed at least one of the songs I mentioned. But if we’re being real, I mostly wrote this article so I could find some of my favorite road trip songs all in one place without having to fight YouTube for them. The next time the road trip flash drive with 1001 songs on it breaks, all is not lost!
Be safe out there, “Drive Friendly: The Texas Way,” and don’t let the vampires catch up with you on those late-night drives!
What are some of your favorite songs for long drives? Feel free to share in the comments!