Top Five Road Trip Songs

I recently listened to an episode of the podcast "Top Five" where they ran down a list of their top five road trip songs. For anyone not familiar with the podcast, it's part of the Major Spoilers podcast network. Every week three or four of the site's hosts get together and run down their top five selections in a given category, discuss their reasoning behind their picks, and generally have a good time while doing it.

The Road Trip episode resonated with me, mainly because I used to do a lot of road trips. The five-plus hour drive between Columbus, OH and central IL where my family lives made for some long drives back in the early 2000's when I would come home to visit, so I put in a lot of time making mix-tapes to play in the car. I know that's probably an alien concept to today's youth. These days, fortunately, I have the iPod loaded up with my library and can just put that sucker on shuffle and cruise, but I worked with what I had back then - and it was a dual-deck shelf stereo with a built-in CD player.

It was hard to pick out just five songs, but after poring over my music library, here's what I came up with:

1. "Life is a Highway" - Tom Cochrane. The original version from the Mad Mad World album, no exceptions. The cover by Rascal Flatts (which people might be more familiar with from its use in the movie Cars) just doesn't hold the same energy for me. It's a song you can blast while you cruise down the open road, headed for your destination, singing along at the top of your lungs.
   
2. "Get Over It" - The Eagles. From their Hell Freezes Over album. Driving beat, high energy, kick-ass lyrics. A good one for when you have a nice, straight stretch of interstate road where you can open up and drive really fast.
   
3. "Ready To Go" - Republica. Found on their eponymous Republica album. Another one with a driving beat, although it starts and ends a tad slow. Fun to drive to, even if you don't know the lyrics.
   
4. "Banditos" - The Refreshments. I can imagine that when they pitched the album name of Fizzy Fuzzy Big & Buzzy to the record execs, they got a lot of weird stares. This one is another one to sing along to. If everyone in the car knows the lyrics you can have a blast belting them out, and there's something inherently geeky about the line that goes "So give your ID card to the border guard / Your alias says you're Captain Jean-luc Picard / Of the United Federation of Planets / 'Cause they won't speak English anyways".
   
5. "Don't Stop Me Now" - Queen. Easist to find on their Greatest Hits album. I'm sorry, but you can't have a road trip play list without including at least one song by Queen. Hell, you could do a whole play list of nothing BUT Queen songs, but that'd ruin the effect of the whole "Top Five" thing. The other obvious (and very valid) choices have already been used, so I went with one that Google picked for the doodle they put up for Freddie Mercury's 65th birthday. It's fun, it's high-energy, and it's the perfect song to cruise down the road to.