5 Rock Songs Every Gen Xer's Road Trip Playlist Needs

You may have the tank full of gas, snacks packed, and the seat warmers set to a cozily bun-toasting temperature, but you're not really ready for a road trip until you've got a curated set of driving tunes. If you're a Gen Xer, we've made you a starter playlist by pulling a few tracks from the '80s and '90s that motorists are most likely to remember from their early days on the road, but they're chosen with a few things in mind. 

Driving songs need to be energetic without being frantic, upbeat without being so perky they make you wish you weren't in the car. The ideal road trip mix balances songs of different energies and distinct eras of your music-listening career to keep the driver entertained and engaged enough not to zone out staring at the white lines. (And every few tracks something to yell-sing along to, as a treat.) 

Gone are the days of carefully writing out track listings on a CD or making mixtapes; now we have the relatively efficient experience of futzing with the phone for an hour, approving or rejecting the algorithm's suggestions. (No, computer, I don't want to cruise down the highway to Jamiroquai. Thanks for asking, I guess.) Anyway, here are five of our top recs. 

In 1974, with fuel costs rising, Congress passed a national speed limit, capping American motorists at 55 miles per hour. The measure is believed to have saved thousands of lives a year, but with the insurmountable problem that people hated it. Fifty-five miles per hour makes the boxy states of the West go by at a perceived crawl, screws up the math for estimating arrival times (dividing by 60 or 70 is way easier than by 55), and most fatally of all, doesn't fit with the open road ethos of the American driver. People who wanted to floor it got their protest anthem courtesy of Sammy Hagar's "I Can't Drive 55."

"I Can't Drive 55" is more or less a novelty song, but a novelty song that's great to drive to. (And since it came out in 1984, poor Sammy had been either reluctantly driving 55 or racking up tickets for a solid decade.) Hagar's voice, more suited for yowling than singing, really spurs you down the road. A fair number of Gen Xers came of driving age when the 55-mph ceiling was still in place, so they'll remember oozing along the highway at a subjective snail's pace/ But now that Hagar's side has won, with the national speed limit repealed in 1995, you can barrel along the road as fast as local laws allow, screaming along with Hagar all the while.

We know this list is supposed to be about rock songs, and Willie Nelson isn't a rock artist, but he is in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, and we know that rock fans recognize his rock 'n' roll heart, so "On the Road Again" gets to be an honorary rock song on our road trip playlist. "On the Road Again" isn't Nelson's best song — that honor arguably goes either to bench-clearing booze ode "I Gotta Get Drunk" or immortal tearjerker "You Are Always on My Mind"— but it's one of his most subliminally eternal. Nearly everyone old enough to drive has mumbled "just can't wait to get on the road again" as they impatiently jingle their keys, willing their passengers to wrap up the goodbyes and get in the car. Since it came out in 1980, it's been a staple of country and crossover radio stations the whole of Gen X's motoring lifespans.

But of course, Nelson's song is much more than an impatient earworm. It's Nelson at his most endearing, singing about how much he wants to hit the road so he can keep hanging out with his friends and making music — you know, being Willie Nelson, which has always looked fun. Nelson's soothing voice and earnest joy at the life of a traveling musician is balm for any of the annoyances on the road, and the tune is simple enough for on-the-road sing-alongs.

One of the important fantasies of American life, a delusion that keeps the country together, is that one day you could just hit the road and never come back. The long, wide interstates of our country, equipped with gas stations and diners for refueling, offer the temptation of just ... going. Gas up the Ford Focus and head for the state line. Fastball's "The Way" distills the idea into music, with lyrics like "An exit to eternal summer slacking / But where were they going without ever knowing the way?" Faced with the Sunday scaries, eternal slacking sounds great, and if you have to drive to California to do it, well, there's I-10 right there.

Now, die-hard Fastball fans, both of them, might point out that the song has a darker genesis: It was inspired by the last road trip of an elderly couple from central Texas, who had become lost and eventually died on their way to a fair. That said, it's hard to hear this grimness in the song itself, which is significantly more optimistic than the news report that sparked its creation.

Really, you could choose any song from No Doubt's mid-'90s mega-smash-hit album "Tragic Kingdom." If you were within 300 miles of a radio at any point during 1995 or 1996, at least one and probably more tracks from this disc are load-bearing sonic memories. The all-slaps no-craps album is simply how the midpoint of the Clinton years sounded. (And in many ways, it's all been downhill from there.)

But if we have to choose one track from "Tragic Kingdom," let's go with "Excuse Me Mr." If it's less iconic than jams like "Spiderwebs" or "Don't Speak," that's only because the album is so packed with killer material that even an excellent tune could be overshadowed. While the song is nominally about wanting attention from a man, "Excuse Me Mr." is something you'll find yourself saying frequently on crowded roads — and it's a far more constructive sentence than "Let me merge!" plus the expletive of your choice. 

Unfortunately, not every road trip is undertaken for happy reasons. Sometimes you're driving away from a situation more than you're driving toward an adventure; sometimes you're headed off to take care of unpleasant business. The road can be a sad, lonely place, and your musical choices can acknowledge that while still maintaining the degree of energy you need to stay alert until the next cup of acidic gas-station coffee-style product. And for those situations, there's the Stone Temple Pilots' "Interstate Love Song."

STP member Scott Weiland wrote the song from his then-wife's perspective, imagining how she felt about putting up with his bull. It's an eloquent exploration of frustration, even if the troubled singer's apparent insight doesn't seem to have improved his behavior much. Sometimes retreat is the way forward, and if that's where you are, let Weiland's big-voiced delivery of this aching song guide you down the road.