It’s July, meaning it’s the perfect time of the year to bust out the trailer, squish everybody into one vehicle and to hit the road. With every long drive comes the necessary tunes needed to entertain the whole family, or group of friends, eager to get pumped up for their upcoming vacation on the road. Here’s some of our picks that need to be on the aux for your next road trip.

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“Life is a Highway” – Rascal Flatts

The most obvious pick, “Life is a Highway” by Rascal Flatts is probably the anthem for any long drive. Not only is the song featured in the kids animation Cars, but the song lyrically is made by making a metaphor about driving down a highway, mix that in with the fact that it’s the ultimate sing a long song, the track is by far the greatest roadtrip tune no matter the length of the drive.

“Don’t Stop Believin’” – Journey

Another upbeat driving rhythm, Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’” provides that one track that’s needed during the drive to revive the mood, when everyone is cramped together in the back seat, and you’ve been sitting in the same position for 6 hours, the song is practically made to push you past your limits, raising the morale of the car with another great sing along.

“Sweet Home Alabama” – Lynyrd Skynyrd

The song is a perfect example of the hypnotic monotony of a long drive. It functions as the darker side of the care-free California driving dream, using the road trip as a narrative for caution in terms of wealth, fame and addiction. Despite that the song is still widely used across playlists for long drives, as the track was originally designed with the vision of a dark desolate desert highway at night by the bandmates after hearing the instrumental for the piece.

“Hotel California” – Eagles

Following a personal tragedy, Ye discarded what we considered his traditional rapping in order to craft an album that was created entirely sung through Auto-Tune, over top of these sparse icy drum machines called 808s. This created a new movement ultimately normalizing the usage of the auto-tune, with influence in artists we see today like Travis Scott, somebody who looked up to Ye throughout his music career. It also introduced the 808 drum into the music world, something not commonly seen in music until then, with the machine becoming much more popular now thanks to the album. The project featured some of his most famous tracks “Heartless” and “Welcome to Heartbreak”.

“Ventura Highway” – America

A song that was quite literally born in the midst of a roadtrip, famous for its sun-drenched harmonized acoustic guitar intro along with it’s carefree West Coast energy, the song makes the perfect melodic sunset track for when the roadtrip is entering the late hours of the day. Fun fact: despite the song’s title, there is no actual highway titled the Ventura Highway however it is named after Highway 1 which travels through Ventura County in California.

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