If you’re heading off on a summer road trip in the next few days, The Wireless has your playlist covered.
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Though I spend most of my waking hours listening to pop bangers, I prefer “guitars” and “bands” when I'm spending any period of more than a couple of hours in a car. It just seems more peaceful and cinematic than Mustard on the beat. I think the key to a good summer road trip playlist is to play to nostalgia and include songs that remind you of past summers, as well as a couple of new favourites. I threw in a couple of decent remixes and a bit of Cassie and The-Dream in there just to keep my interest, though.
Driving out of town, I’ll be listening to whatever song I’ve most recently become obsessed with. Current flavour of the month: Father John Misty’s ‘Hollywood Forever Cemetery Sings’. Driving across empty country – State Highway 4 on the western side of Tongariro or that stretch of State Highway 6 through Westland – I want songs with big beats and deep rhythms to propel me on. But what really makes a road trip sound track are the head-nodders, the sing-alongs and songs that bring back memories of riding in vans with old buddies.
On long road trips I just need music that I'm feeling at the time and tunes that keeps me awake, but there are always classics that never get old. Most of the time though, with my taste, I have to learn to share the stereo.
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Since Taylor Swift took her songs off Spotify, there’s no Shake It Off, but that would have been right at the top this year. There’s something about the long straight roads of the Canterbury Plains in the middle of summer that make me want to sing out loud to the divas of the 1980s and 90s. This is about the only time you’d ever get me to sing loudly – that doesn’t involve a bottle of cheap wine and a karaoke booth, anyway.
My trusty, rusty bike is my usual mode of transport, so when I get behind the wheel I need a little help to stay energized. This playlist is full of big beats, earwormy hooks and the occasional odd lyric to interpret, and hopefully, sing along with. No one’s listening, what have you got to lose?
I either want road trip songs that make me feel like I’m in a coming of age film about to embark on the last summer of my youth or that I can screech sing tunefully along to at full volume.
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Cover image: Flickr user G Morel