Whether you’re dreaming of a vintage hippie road trip in a busted VW campervan, or an Instagram worthy adventure through desert sunsets, music blaring on the open roads, our playlist of songs about road trips crosses the genres and covers it all, no matter where your destination lies.
Songs About Road Trips
1. Red Hot Chili Peppers – Road Trippin’
Road Trippin’ is Red Hot Chili Peppers’ apparent take on the vintage hippie combination of road trips and drug trips; a blissfully acoustic track interwoven with string sections carrying the pure atmosphere of free-spirited adventure.
This track is laden with an intrinsic love for the outdoors, filled with radiant lines compelling the listener to re-enter nature and live life to the fullest; “Now let us drink the stars, it’s time to steal away, let’s go get lost right here in the USA.”
RHCP make no direct drug references but their underlying theme is well implied through Road Trippin’s psychedelic use of language; “Blue, you sit so pretty west of the one, sparkles light with yellow icing, just a mirror for the sun.”
2. The Hollow Coves – The Open Road
The Hollow Coves’ ground their serenely acoustic indie pop track, The Open Road, in the concept of wanderlust. This is a track about craving escape from the perpetual monotony of everyday life, enchanted by the vast potential of personally uncharted territory.
The Hollow Coves’ soundscape is irresistibly soothing and humble, painting an otherworldy landscape behind the narrator’s wishes of travelling to the distant horizon; “I’m dreaming of the road again, set free in the wind, feels like we’ve found home again, on the road that’s grown within.”
The Open Road is a piece for anyone who can’t sit still and wait for their misery to naturally depart, preferring to dispel their despair with the endless thrill of adventure; “With the summer sun over open plains, with the windows down, we’ll drive along, and our hearts will grow as our troubles fade away.”
3. Still Corners – The Trip
This dream pop track by Still Corners is mesmerisingly atmospheric, pushed forth by a soft driving energy reminiscent of a late-night road trip lit only by stars and fluorescence.
Tying together smooth inspirations from post-punk and new wave pop, this track almost transcends its era with its timeless, instrumental-heavy approach.
Still Corners craft a sound as fluid as the black night that guides their natural adventure and, similarly to Red Hot Chili Peppers, discreetly bring into equilibrium both meanings of the word ‘tripping.’
The Trip is dedicated to a simple lyrical message of progress and keeping pace, whether you perceive them for their literal road trip meaning or for their symbolism of a spiritual journey; “Time has come to go, pack your bags, hit the open road, our hearts just won’t die, it’s the trip, keeps us alive, so many miles, so many miles away.”
4. Harry Styles – Keep Driving
Harry Styles’ 2022 release, Keep Driving details an Instagram-aesthetic road trip with friends, his immersive scenery of retro resurgence crafting a time-capsule of youth for nearly any generation;
“Black and white film camera, yellow sunglasses, ash tray … Kiss her and don’t tells, wine glass, puff pass … Cocaine, side boob, choke her with a sea view, toothache, bad move, just act normal.”
Keep Driving is padded with an addictively bubbly sound, swelling with an ominous intensity during the bridge before the atmosphere is cut cleanly apart by the title line;
“Should we just keep driving?” – a subtle sonic metaphor for fleeing your loading misery by taking to the open road.
5. Abby Cates – Roadtrip Song
This track by Abby Cates harvests the ambience of 60s hippie road trips and romances, transporting lush, earthy acousticism to the current moment.
Roadtripsong is fascinatingly poetic, its lyrics illustrating a tale of wanderlust and loneliness. Each line carries an immersive yet open-ended metaphor of endlessly searching for something you can’t find, allowing the listener to thread their own life story and adventures throughout the lyrics, whichever fragment of life you perceive them as referring to;
“Wrote a letter to the mountains, they never wrote me back, I loved the sky so fiercely, still the thunder cracks, gave flowers to the ocean, still, my heart was blue, of all the things I’ve loved, my darling, the best by far is you.”
Cates’ track is subtly devoted to the art of gaining wisdom through adventure, showcased through lines like, “I wished so hard that I could fly, my wings just weighed me down, I dreamed that I could be a boat, but I sailed too far and drowned.”
Whilst making no specific mention of road trips, she implies every minute spent upon the Earth is a journey in itself, specifically highlighting the long walk getting from point A to point B in the slow, car-less crawl out of loneliness.
6. Dream ft. PmBata – Roadtrip
Dream & PmBata’s collab, Roadtrip, is a bright radio pop track with a message clouded in crestfallen nostalgia. Drawing upon the road trip themes of change and movement, this track reminisces on a past roadtrip with an ex, in grief for the time since passed.
Dream & PmBata anchor their track in a unique sentiment of specific roads and areas giving way to life-changing memories, but however many times you drive down that same road in your adult life, it will never take you to the same place as when you were a teen;
“Twenty hours in an old Ford, across the Midwest, thinking, “What for?” Drove twenty hours, but it’s hopeless, across the Midwest, what a road trip, now that interstate is paved with memories, of a past life I lived when I was eighteen.”
6. Rihanna – Shut Up And Drive
Rihanna’s 2007 hit single, Shut Up And Drive, is moulded around its collection of euphemisms, drawing lines between the two types of riding; “I’ve been looking for a driver who is qualified, so if you think that you’re the one step into my ride.”
But looking past its sleazy allusions, Shut Up And Drive gleams just as bright under the light of taking a roadtrip with friends, eagerly anticipating the adventure that lies ahead;
“So if you feel me let me know, come on now what you waiting for, my engine’s ready to explode, so start me up and watch me go, go, go, go.”