songs that need to be played max volume, windows down, top speed, empty road

Correct answer kinda feels like "all of them", but also there is a particular kind of song.

The Stooges - Down on the street

obligatory 4'33" shoutout

ZZ Top - Gimme All Your Lovin´

sting - fields of gold

Mountain - Mississippi Queen

Freebird

Neu! - Für Immer

<3

Moorhead- Ace of Spades

Modern Lovers - Roadrunner

Underworld ‘Dark and Long’

Bleedin' Autobahn, obv

Depeche Mode "It's No Good"

Windows stay up though - it's just for me.

Janet Jackson - Go Deep

minor threat - straight edge

I know it’s 2025 and we can listen to Stooges or Minor Threat or anything else while driving , but thread title conjures my youth (1970s) and rock radio. There’s a pretty big overlap in my Venn diagram with this and the buttrock thread.

So yeah, ZZ Top. Voting “La Grange” but the first thing that actually came to mind was “On The Road Again” by Canned Heat.

https://www.discogs.com/master/1320902-Various-Top-Gear-Anthems-The-Greatest-Ever-Driving-Songs

The Cry of Love album by Jimi Hendrix sounds great in the car

2024: "American Woman" is played out and misogynistic
2025: [cranks "American Woman" in the car]

Hank Williams - Long Gone Lonesome Blues

Madness - Driving in My Car

Des'ree - Life

OMC - How Bizarre

Running on Empty

rainbow - stargazer

Sun City Girls - Space Prophet Dogon

Extreme - More Than Words

Limmy - wrong way down a one way street

was my answer for the road trip music league round: thin lizzy - "cowboy song"

Soundgarden - Rusty Cage

I mean, I've listen to most of these songs in these conditions, and yet my single greatest driving-to-music experience was rolling through West Virginia mountains after a rainstorm blasting a Michael Nyman cassette picked out of a bargain bin at the start of the road trip, unwrapped and played for the first time. The line of ten yellow school busses passing us in the mist-saturated air while "Nose-List Song" played is indelible

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bNQKYolhZkg

Queens of the Stone Age “You Think I Ain’t Worth a Dollar, But I Feel Like a Millionaire”

there are loads of these, i have some more very personal picks

misty morning drive -- CFCF - The Colours of Life, particularly "Our World", ideally you're coming around a curve on PCH just as the sun glitters briefly thru a cloud and strikes the ocean like a spotlight at the exact moment the guitar kicks in, then it gets cloudy again. Same drive, maybe as things get more gray again, just listen to the self-titled Voices From the Lake album, the album Rigning by Yagya, as it gets brighter and the clouds are leaving "Wind and Rain" by Long Island Sound, and when the sun comes out just blast the fuck out of "Babylon" by Brendan Perry, close it quietly with "Sea of Dreams" by Faint Waves, "Benthos" by Maricopa, and "Dust" by Rue de Soleil.

country road driving -- Kathleen Edwards - "Hard on Everyone" is a very good one, also like Sara Evans' "Real Fine Place" and probably the entirety of "Like a Rose" by Ashley Monroe.

approaching a vast metropolis as the sun sets and the sky darkens -- could probably start off w/the vv ethereal "Tony's Theme" from the soundtrack to the film Hard-Boiled (by Michael Gibbs), then FM Attack, "Dark Blue Sky", Au Suisse - "GC", and "Juanita/Kiteless/To Dream of Love" by Underworld.

suburban wasteland driving - just hit play on the album It's Real by Ex Hex and listen to over and over again.

I have done that with that Ex Hex record! An excellent recent example.

Cat Power - Rockets

The Mountain Goats - This Year

LA Woman (especially at night)

Sun City Girls - Space Prophet Dogon

― Mrs. Ippei (Steve Shasta), Friday, 7 March 2025 02:58 (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Fkn A!

There is one song I like to play in the context of when you get back in town, and you are one of the boys

TELL ME WHEN TO GO

The Mountain Goats - This Year

― cryptosicko, Thursday, March 6, 2025 3:41 PM (thirty-nine minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

No, no. That one's for the "songs that need to be played max volume, windows down, top speed, driveway" thread.

Fu Manchu “King Of The Road”
Golden Earring “Radar Love”

sade - cherish the day

first one that makes sense

nick drake - river man

pink moon was the other thing that came to mind. sometimes a commercial gets it exactly right.

I love pink moon as much as anyone but it is 100% an incorrect answer to the thread question

Unless it's there's an ac/dc cover i missed

- (it's)

Luke Slater - Quadphonik

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GGjO5YevKgE

Talk Talk - Living In Another World (Extended Mix)

Creedence - ramble tamble

Credence- keep on chooglin' - live at Woodstock 2019 release

Mandy Smith - Just Can’t Wait (Cool and Breezy Jazz version)

Agreed with s/t Voices from the Lake and “Rigning” as great albums for cloudy sky driving!

For clearer/brighter conditions:
Auto Repeat - You Can't Stop (DJ Elin Remix)
Los Hermanos - The Very Existence
Me'Shell NdegéOcello - Earth (Ben Watt Lazy Dog Remix)
Swayzak - Lokal
Life on Earth Presents Lifeforce - Altitude
Charli XCX - C2.0

X - True Love

Limmy suggestion is the only legit answer

For my longer drives, it's uptempo drum-heavy scream-alongs that would perfectly accompany a 'training for victory/assembling a squad' film montage, so here's a rowdy collection that you can fully fit on a 1999-vintage Diamond Rio mp3 player, or Side 1 of that unopened 90-minute Maxell in the glove compartment:

Wolf Like Me - TV on the Radio
Medicine - Sons & Daughters
Sister Rosetta (Capture the Spirit) - Noisettes
Welcome Home, Luc Robitaille - Mando Diao
Bang! - Yeah Yeah Yeahs
Gin and Milk - Dirty Pretty Things
Oh, the Guilt - Nirvana
B.O.B. - OutKast
Cradle (A Balloon Called Moaning version) - The Joy Formidable
Girl O' Clock - Dismemberment Plan
One Armed Scissor - At the Drive-In
Dress Off - Le Butcherettes
M.E.X.I.C.O. - The Kills
The Rat - The Walkmen

once was flipping through stations while driving through Wyoming mountains and Steve Earle’s “I Ain’t Ever Satisfied “ came on and it was just incredible, i turned it up so loud. i have a lot of these

i love it when i turn on the radio and it's the right jam at the right time, crunchy around the edges with the fm static. last time this happened was tom petty "you wreck me". "you don't know how it feels" fits too.

Seconding la woman

“Driving down your freeway”
Vs
“Ooh, down the road I go”

Once, we had been waiting outside a gas station in the pouring rain in Castle Rock, Washington, for a few hours. No one was picking up hitchers, and we were thinking we were going to have to sleep in the woods.

Then two young dudes came up in a new Toyota pickup and rolled down their passenger window and just said, “Hey.” We asked them where they were going, and they said, “Fishing, but what about yall,” so we said, “Tacoma, or Seattle.” And so then they said, “I guess we’re going to Tacoma then.”

So we got into the back bench seat of this truck— there were shotgun shells rolling around on the floor— and these 21 year olds dudes who kept packing bowls of synthetic weed drove us to Tacoma.

On the way, “When the Levee Breaks” came on and the one driving just cranked it and we all were headbanging as we passed bleak towns on the interstate, the rain clearing by then.

Post script to that story— the guy driving was Alaskan Native and spent three weeks on a pipeline up north and three weeks in Castle Rock, on and off, and when we dropped us off near the TacomaDome, he slipped $150 into my hand— we really needed it.

About seven years later , I ran into him at a party in New Orleans, and he had turned full queer land punk and also remembered my name and that whole incident as being really transformative for him. Cool shit!

i was crying with laughter the one time i saw some bro blaring talking heads "this must be the place" down the main strip at peak nightlife hours.

dj quik and kurupt - hey playa!

I rolled the windows down for a few seconds during “new frontier” on the way home from work.

local garda otm

“conga”

“don’t go away mad (just go away)”

Christopher Cross - Ride Like The Wind

“Babe, I’m on Fire” could get you halfway from LA to Vegas.

amg - bitch better have my money
acdc - problem child
war - low rider
sir lord baltimore - pumped up

Unfortunately it's been illegal for some time to do this to 'Boys Of Summer'.

Johnny Cash - Folsom Prison Blues off At Folsom Prison. That whole album is a great road trip album.

Double - The Captain of Her Heart

table, great story

sigue sigue sputnik- the shoot shoot shoot em up song

off the top of my head
Lambchop - Up With People
Jim O'Rourke - All Downhill From Here
Bedouin Ascent - Broadway Boogie Woogie
Can - Moonshake
all of Double Nickels on the Dime
Death Grips - Guillotine

the cars - the cars

Planet Patrol - play at your own risk (12" version)

undestroyable; car-tested over a 40y span

great call, that one is great for driving through the city at night as well

Gary Numan - Cars
Also Gary Numan - M.E.

yessss

Acker Bilk - Stranger on the Shore

^ gets it

local garda otm

otm

percy faith - theme from a summer place

Aislers Set - "Emotional Levy"