Drivin’ Tunes
Max Ingleby shares his favourite tunes to listen to whilst driving.
There’s something so immersive, almost cinematic, about driving with music. When zooming down winding roads, locked in your own little bubble of sound, music blasted through your speakers just sounds better. Driving alone allows for a unique, personal space to experience your favourite songs, where you can sing to your heart’s content, or zone out to a mesmerising track on a dark motorway. Here are a few of the tunes that I seem to always end up playing when I’m behind the wheel.
BKNY – Fat Tony
This euphoric love letter to Brooklyn, NYC, just screams summer. There’s some great story telling from Fat Tony, and seemingly every street in the borough gets a shout out, from Linden Boulevard to Kings Highway. Perfect to cruise along to with the bass up and the windows down.
Behind Bars (Dum Ditty Dum Remix) – Slick Rick feat. Warren G
Slick Rick has got to have one of the, well, slickest flows of all time, and add that to Warren G’s G-Funk production and it’s hard to find another hip-hop track as laid-back and smooth as this. Released whilst Rick was himself behind bars, the brutal lyrics about prison life almost comically clash with the luxurious instrumental, but it somehow works perfectly. Just sit back, relax, and try to forget that Rick just bragged about stabbing some guy “in the eye with a pencil”.
Try – Delta 5
‘Try’ is a brilliantly bouncy post-punk banger from this short-lived group from the late seventies. Anchored by a relentless beat and a killer bassline, and not much else, it’s an absolute gem, and impossible not to sing along to as you’re driving along. For fans of ESG and The Raincoats.
Doomsday – MF Doom
A few years ago, I took it upon myself to learn every word of this stone-cold classic from Doom’s debut – I know, cringe – but it’s not gonna stop me from rapping the whole thing every time it comes on in the car! The Sade sample is rad, the wordplay is frankly mind-blowing and it has a fade out/fade in/fade out/fade in/fade out just to keep you guessing.
Out of the Races and Onto the Tracks – The Rapture
Coming straight out of New Jersey, The Rapture dropped this explosive track at the very start of the post-punk revival in the early 2000s, and it sounds shockingly fresh some twenty years later. Forget singing along, you have to shout along to this one, which obviously makes it ideal for solo car rides – in a Skoda Citigo, no one can hear you scream.
My Boo (Hitman’s Club Mix) – Ghost Town DJs
Yeah yeah, I know it’s from the running man meme from 2016, but hear me out – ‘My Boo’ is a mid-90s 808-fueled masterpiece of the highest order. If anything, I would advise caution when playing this in the car, as it’s so insanely danceable that it takes all of your self-control just to keep your hands on the wheel. There’s a reason that chorus went viral a few years ago, but trust me, the rest of the song holds up just as well.
Audition – Mount Kimbie
I spoke earlier of the cinematic quality of driving with music, and ‘Audition’ by Mount Kimbie really does make you feel like you’re in a movie. I used to listen to this a lot driving back from a job that finished late at night, and there’s something about the tunnelling bass line and the echoing, skipping synths that fits perfectly with an empty midnight motorway. If you haven’t heard it already, check out ‘Oblivion’ by Grimes, which is similarly best experienced whilst driving in the early hours.
