Australia and summer road trips are as iconic as smashed avo on toast. So what does your choice in playlist say about you?
With the land down under being home to a plethora of stunning scenery to explore – from the ocean views and rugged cliffs of the Pacific Coast, tropical rainforests with tree canopies enveloping overhead, through to alluring deserts and outback of the red centre, our backyard is often a top pick for a road trip, especially over the summer break.
And whether you’re taking one of these trips solo, as a grey nomad with a caravan trailing at the back, or with your entire family in tow, there’s nothing better to build the excitement or to fill any downtime than the perfect soundtrack for your journey.
Enter the road trip playlist. While they are most definitely not new, joining millions of travellers over decades through radios, cassettes, CDs and now digitally as their odometers click over the kilometres, they are still very much essential.
Go-to and often car or driving-themed songs have made countless searchable road trip playlists the world over – notably Fast Car by Tracey Chapman, I Drove All Night by Cyndi Lauper, On the Road Again by Willie Nelson and Life is a Highway by Tom Cochrane.
Streaming platform, Spotify has a dedicated Classic Road Trip Songs playlist available to listen to, featuring 100 classic tracks including Toto’s Africa, Running Up That Hill by Kate Bush, In the Air Tonight by Phil Collins and Jack & Diane by John Mellencamp.
And while some of these masterpieces also feature on my own curated playlist, alongside some good ballads, cue Whitney Houston, Apple Music’s Summertime Sounds have (perhaps more qualified) insight from some of Australia’s favourite artists, who have personally curated road trip playlists.
Parkway Drive’s vocalist, Winston McCall created a ‘Surfer Goth’ playlist for drives down on the coast.
“These are the songs for the stormy drives down the coast. The songs for the dark roads just before dawn that stick in your head when the sun comes up. These are the songs that stick in my head when the waves have washed everything else away,” he says.
The playlist includes the following tracks.
1. Ghost, Call Me Little Sunshine
“This song oozes fog and haze and smoke. The riff is undeniable, the darkness is real and inviting and the chorus never leaves you once it’s crept its way in,” McCall says.
2. Queens of the Stone Age, If I Had a Tail
“The first time I heard this I was convinced it was Bowie. I still think it could be via some dark possession of Josh Homme. That’s enough to make it worthy of any drive.”
3. Radiohead, Karma Police
“Apart from being an all-time song, the music video is literally the creepiest night-time drive you can imagine.”
Singer-songwriter, Meg Mac also has curated a playlist inspired by her time on the road while touring the US.
“I’ve been living on a tour bus for the last month and these are the songs that have been with me. I know they’re going to be forever tied to these memories with the Jacob Banks crew and this weird time on the bus, travelling around America. It’s my tour playlist for any season,” she says.
Some of her featured road trip tracks include:
1. The Avener, Fade Out Lines
2. Leon Bridges, Texas Sun
3. Jacob Banks, By Design
While everyone’s road trip playlist will be a bit different because everyone’s tastes are different, what is key to creating an epic playlist according to many experienced road trippers is:
- Variety (so yes, Whitney, Disney and Aerosmith in the one playlist is okay.)
- Be prepared! Download or have the media ready to go because Wi-Fi is not so accessible in the middle of the desert.
- And finally, don’t be afraid to pop in some other audio like books, podcasts or comedy sketches in the mix.
Keyword: Top Australian summer road trip playlist choices revealed