What's the perfect road trip playlist?

All Songs Considered

NPR

Music

4.4 • 3.2K Ratings

🗓️ 12 August 2025

⏱️ 50 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Before summer disappears, we share our favorite songs for your long and winding drives, plus a list of ground rules (does the driver always have final say?), and a breakdown of what works best when.

Featured artists and songs:

1. Eric Burdon and War: “Spill the Wine,” from Eric Burdon Declares “War”
2. Stromae: “Santé,” from Multitude
3. Broadway Cast: “Alexander Hamilton,” from Hamilton
4. Joe Iconis / Broadway Cast: “Michael in the Bathroom,” from Be More Chill
5. Abiotic: “Vermosapien,” from Symbiosis
6. Wipers: “Mystery,” from Is This Real?
7. Steely Dan: “My Old School,” from Countdown to Ecstasy
8. Tunde Olaniran: “Namesake,” from Transgressor
9. Shania Twain: “Man, I Feel Like a Woman!” from Come On Over
10. Pat Travers: “Amgwanna Kick Booty,” from Black Pearl
11. Anthrax & Public Enemy: “Bring The Noise,” from Attack of the Killer B’s
12. Unwed Sailor: “Monster Collecting,” from Cruel Entertainment
13. The Allman Brothers Band: “Midnight Rider,” from Idlewild South and “Southbound,” from Brothers And Sisters
14. Lakestreet Dive: “You Go Down Smooth,” from Bad Self Portraits
15. Black Sabbath: “Turn Up The Night,” from Mob Rules
16. Simple Minds: “Don’t You (Forget About Me),” from The Breakfast Club

All Songs Considered 25th anniversary segment: Our No. 1 songs from 2024

Weekly reset: Summer roadtrip while listening to the radio

Hear the songs in our Roadtrip Mix on Spotify and Apple.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Uh, mics are on.
0:03.0	How are we doing this here?
0:04.9	Well, it's road trip season.
0:09.0	And nothing goes better with road trips and listening to music. I'm Robin Hilton. All Songs Considered. Stephen Thompson is here. Stephen, I know you're a road trip warrior. You know, I have been. Oh, come on, your trips to Wisconsin are legendary. This is true. Yeah. They're the stuff of a younger, more foolish man. And Lars Gottrich, you're here as well. Have you been known to get behind the wheel? I like to get behind the wheel. We do a lot of road trips down to Asheville, North Carolina. That's where my folks live. But don't you, Steven, don't you like get in the car at night, like in the evening or something and just drive all night? Or like you do it in one shot or something. You know, I did that for a really long time. You know, I would go back, and I still, you know, to this day, have some of the most dearly
1:13.6	loved people in my life live in Wisconsin.
1:15.6	I love to go back.
1:17.6	Driving for 14 to 18 hours.
1:21.6	Okay.
1:22.6	Does not do for my back what it used to?
1:25.6	I used to be an absolute machine behind the wheel.
1:29.3	Like I remember one time I was in Kansas
1:33.1	and I had a friend in DC and he's like,
1:35.1	I want you come out, we'll just hang out.
1:37.1	I was like, okay.
1:38.4	And I got in the car and drove 21 hours by myself
1:43.3	and I didn't think anything of it. and now i don't even like going to
1:46.5	fairfax that's like like 30 minutes away yeah it's only like 40 yeah that's the beltway
1:53.6	who's doing that maybe we shouldn't be doing the show what i'm saying is are none of us
2:00.8	qualified well okay well still the whole premise of the show we shouldn't be doing this show. We shouldn't know. What I'm saying is, are none of us qualified?
2:01.6	Well, okay, well, still the whole premise of this show is we were thinking before summer gets completely away from us, you know, we thought we'd share and talk about some of the songs that we play and listen to when we're on the road, because this is road trip season.
2:16.6	And we've got some categories
2:19.4	I think we're going to in some themes for some of the songs that we're going to play might not
	...

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