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Two great car songs that are not really about cars: Drive My Car by the Beatles and Trampled Under Foot by Led Zeppelin. The latter features a (yes) driving, clavinet-heavy backing (their tribute to Superstition) over which Robert Plant unleashes a series of great double-entendres. For example:

"Come to me for service/Every hundred miles/Baby let me check your points/Fix your overdrive."

"Troublefree transmission/Helps your oils flow/Mama, let me pump your gas/Mama, let me do it all."

Classic stuff & way cooler than anything by the Beach Boys or Jan & Dean!

I found this show to so simple-minded and your guests' comments so reactionary.
95% of the car-songs came out of California. They invoked the general atmosphere of the "life-styles" supposedly indulged in out there; surfing, Hollywood, etc. And a lot of the car-songs of the '50s and '60s were inspired by the deeds of custom-car makers who looked at their work as a form of art. And we in the '60s certainly were very preoccupied with self-expression, no matter what the source of inspiration.
What does "fuel efficiency" have anything to do with lack of freedom, lack of fun or extravagance? The reason cars have looked like small tanks or large cockroaches for the past thirty-odd years should not be blamed on ecology. Think about this: when was the last time you saw anybody drive a convertible?

Bruce Springsteen has many well know car/driving songs (Pink Cadillac, Thunder Road Born to Run), but among his best car/driving songs is "Open All Night" a B-side rockabilly rocker that clearly is paying homage to Chuck Berry's "Promised Land" and "You Can't Catch Me".

From this song, a good playlist would jump to the Dave Edmunds/Rockpile track (Bruce written) "From Small Thing Big Things Come' followed by Rockpile's own "Crawling from the Wreckage".

I love "Beep Beep" by the Playmates. Not only was it a fun song that sped up as it went along, but there was a punchline at the end! (Not to mention competition with "the little car!")

For my first solo drive after receiving my drivers license I pulled out of my parents driveway blasting "Money Ain't A Thing" by Jay-Z and Jermaine Dupri, they sing "In the Ferrari or Jaguar switchin' four lanes, with the top down screamin' out money ain't a thing." Although I wasn't in a Ferrari or Jaguar and I barely had enough money for gas, the song for me expressed how fun it was to just drive and all the possibilities available to me once I had that freedom.

My 2 favorite car song recordings are Prince's "Little Red Corvette" and Aretha Franklin's "Pink Cadillac." I've never owned a car but did share a maroon '62 Chevy Belair station wagon with my 3 brothers in the mid 60s when we were in high school. It was affectionately known as Big Red. The only song inspired by a station wagon I can think of is Jan & Dean's recording of "Surf City," written by Brian Wilson, that mentions a '34 Woody.

NSU by Cream...."Drivin' in my car, smokin my cigar....." and "Shut 'em Down"

Four letters - NRBQ. "Drivin' In My Car", about the endlessly intertwined pursuits of love and the open road.

Le tigre---We like the Cars that go Boom!!

LIKE A ROCK...enough said.

aretha franklin
we going riding on the freeway in my pink cadillac!!

"DESERT DRIVE" by BRIAN WILSON - a RECENT song of the 2004 album "Getting In Over My Head", sings about the open road, of course in a desert!

TRex Jeepster!

"Jesus Built My Hotrod" by Ministry. Or "Sado County Auto Show" by the Cramps. Goths and cars -- why not? The idea of "riding out" is pretty existential already.

Cars have always been phallic symbols for men. That's why there are so many songs about the Cadillac. It’s a HUGE car. Nobody wants to write a song about a two door Toyota.
By the way… If there’s a God in Heaven, he drives a Silver Thunderbird.

My favorite song, Neil Young, Long May You Run, didn't work for GM and Neil didn't even sing it this year at the Garden.

Car songs aren't always about literal cars, yes? We can still sing about a Pink Cadillac because it's not about a pink...car; and the Little Red Corvette, likewise, is only thinly vehicular in nature. The sexual metaphor of the car, for both men and women, will stand.

Debra by Beck on Midnight Vultures

"Lady, step inside my Hyundai"

Best Car Song Hand Down: Hot Rod Lincoln by Commander Cody and the Lost Planet Airmen

Tom Waits - Pontiac, great commentary on American car romance

Woody Guthrie - Car Song, perhaps the first car song?

Did you hear Jeff Beck and Jennifer Batten play "THX 138," also the license plate number of Milner's yellow deuce coupe in American Grafitti?

Hey John
Remember Grey Cortina from the Tom Robinson Band circa 1977,Really good car song
Jerry

we can lament the death of the car-song, but I know, that 20 years on, someone somewhere will be listening to "Paradise by the Dashboard Light." If only that song would fade out with the age of the gas-guzzling muscle car

The song for our era is Le Tigre's "My MetroCard"

And one of the greatest car songs (which, I'm told, is not really about a car at all!), "Little Red Corvette"?

Thanks,

Lovin' the show!

My favorite is "Mustang Sally," sung by The Commitments. Very muscular!

Prince's Little Red Corvette! Favorite car song ever!

Sorry, but the "car era" was always a fantasy, and an incredibly corrupt, unhealthy one. General Motors and Standard Oil created the demand by buying up public transportation systems in cities across America and trashing them (with the tacit approval of the government), so that Americans had no choice but to buy their products. [see also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_American_streetcar_scandal] What we're seeing now is a re-emergence of something called "reality," but it's come a little too late.

Favorite car song?

Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers "Road Runner"

Lyrics:

"Road Runner"

one two three four five six
Roadrunner, roadrunner
Going faster miles an hour
Gonna drive past the Stop 'n' Shop
With the radio on

I'm in love with Massachusetts
And the neon when it's cold outside
And the highway when it's late at night
Got the radio on
I'm like the roadrunner

Alright
I'm in love with modern moonlight
128 when it's dark outside
I'm in love with Massachusetts
I'm in love with the radio on
It helps me from being alone late at night
It helps me from being lonely late at night
I don't feel so bad now in the car
Don't feel so alone, got the radio on
Like the roadrunner
That's right

my favorite is natalie cole's cover of "pink cadillac." the car songs of the 60's still gives me goose bumps. i was a kid then and they were aspirational songs.

what about american graffiti?

ted

my favorite is natalie cole's cover of "pink cadillac." the car songs of the 60's still gives me goose bumps. i was a kid then and they were aspirational songs.

what about american graffiti?

ted

or gary numan "Cars", it's not specific but it sure sounds weird.

Would the proliferation of car songs in that era have had anything to do with a sudden expansion of the availability of cars whereas now cars are old hat? Going from a compact car to a muscle car is not the same type of change as going from no car to any type of car, which is what that generation of songs captured.

Little Red Corvette ...Hands Down for me

In the 50's and 60's, cars represented a new freedom and independence from home, parents
etc. We were "free wheelin"...
Think post-war teenagers itching to be on the move...away from their small towns and small
town thinking

I think they'll be playin' DEADMAN'S CURVE now that the American car industry is dead. Here's Blink 182's cover of the classic Jan & Dean (and Brian Wilson song)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-U0nvjiHHf4

P.S. One of my favorite car song's: Beach Boy's "Spirit of America".

Current cars don't inspire music? Wasn't there a recent song about Volvo Drivin' Soccer Moms?

Not quite in the same league though.....

As I look out of the window at my '69 Dart rusting away into the driveway, I can't help humming Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers "Dodge Veg-A-Matic!"

"Well, that's my Dodge Veg-O-Matic there in the parking lot.
My Dodge Veg-O-Matic, there in the parking lot.
You know, I like it.
You know, I like to watch it rot."

A 68 GTO with a 6.5 liter engine went from 0-60 mph in no time and over 100 mph in very little longer. Not smart, not practical, not PC. FUN.

what about hip-hop and it's love for cars?

Just brought a Cadillac-throw some "D"'s on it....
or
Rollin' in my 6-4, by Dr. Dre

How about anti-auto industry songs? "The Big Three Killed My Baby" by the white stripes.

what about 'Little Honda' by the Beach Boys?

We were not obsessed with the ozone layer and the asphalt back then either.

There were also bands that used cars in their name - Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels - doing songs about cars (Jenny Take a Ride)

The car songs, the cars and the car lifestyle died of natural causes decades ago. Any residual misty eyes are just nostalgia for an America that died in Southeast Asia. Like GM, let them rest in peace. It's gone.

There is/was the Dodge Charger, the new Mustang for ya muscle cars....but muscle cars had to give way to aerodynamics.

You can't forget Ronnie & the Daytona's "Little Gto". An ode to a brand that will soon be extinct!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=44kg0IENTPU

Car songs explore and express our fascination (especially American's) with the automobile and all that it represents. Even though Springsteen, ZZ Top, Beach Boys, Prince and many others effectively incorporated the spirit of the car and its meaning into a variety of songs, my favorite (if I have to pick one) is "Hot Rod Lincoln," best covered (I believe) by Commander Cody. Guess that shows my true colors!

You can't talk about American car songs without mentioning Bruce Springsteen!

Though his themes have evolved from the optimism of "Thunder Road" ("Well the night's busting open/These two lanes will take us anywhere") to the resignation of "The Ghost of Tom Joad" ("The highway is alive tonight/But nobody's kiddin' nobody about where it goes").

I hate cars. I demand equal time for bike and train songs.

In fact, I demand equal time for car crash songs.

(I was going to list some but there's already a huge list of Car Crash Songs on wikipedia)