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World Hum’s Top 40 Travel Songs of All Time

World Hum’s Top 40 Travel Songs of All Time

Lists: We traveled. We listened. We voted. These are the tunes that best capture the spirit of the road.

Photo by John Tino Photo by John Tino

When we wanted to create a list of the best travel songs, we turned to some of the most knowledgeable and passionate travelers we know: our writers and contributors. We gave them broad voting criteria: If it’s a song about travel or inspires travel or just a song that they must listen to while they travel, it’s eligible.



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After everyone spent intimate time with their iPods, we emerged with World Hum’s top 40 travel songs of all time—and some personal stories about why we all love the travel songs we love.—The editors

MORE ON TRAVEL SONGS: Go straight to Top 10 | Anthony Bourdain’s Subcontinental Homesick Blues | Interactive Map

40) Ramblin’ Man (1973)

Artist: The Allman Brothers Band

Songwriter: Dickey Betts

Fact: It was The Allman Brothers Band’s first and only Billboard top 10 hit; it peaked at No. 2.—Wikipedia

Why I love it: I grew up in New Orleans before Duane and Greg Allman ever put the city in “Ramblin’ Man” but hearing the song now—say, I’m driving the Natchez Trace through Mississippi—puts me in strong mind of the secret backstreets of the French Quarter, of chicory coffee and dark sultry nights with the sassy girls of 1967. Then, when it’s time for leavin’ ... Wanderlust is eternal.—Eric Lucas

39) Roadrunner (1972)

Artist: The Modern Lovers

Songwriter: Jonathan Richman

Fact: The song pays homage to driving Route 128, just outside Boston.—The Guardian

Why I love it: You’re sixteen: you can’t vote, can’t buy booze, can’t buy smokes, you live with your parents and you have to leave for school at the crack of dawn each and every day. Life pretty much sucks. But you can roll down the windows, turn up the music and cruise the strip of your podunk town, and it’s about as good a trip as you’ll ever take.—Alex Basek

38) Sweet Home Alabama (1974)

Artist: Lynyrd Skynyrd

Songwriters: Ed King, Gary Rossington and Ronnie Van Zant

Fact: The notorious “Turn it up!” Ronnie Van Zant utters at the start of the track was unplanned. Van Zant was indeed asking the producer to turn up the volume on his headphones.—Rolling Stone

Why I love it: I’m a native of the American South, and I often turn to regional music when I need solace on the road. This feel-good song about my homeland always picks me up when I’m feelin’ blue.—Leigh Ann Henion

37) Where the Streets Have No Name (1987)

Artist: U2

Songwriters: U2, Bono

Fact: Bono was inspired to write the song after learning that on certain streets in Belfast, Northern Ireland it was possible to determine the religion and wealth of the inhabitants, simply from which side or end of the street they lived. “That said something to me,” he said. “And so I started writing about a place where the streets have no name.”—U2.com

Why I love it: “Streets” is the musical equivalent of lighting a candle and saying a prayer. I play it before commencing any major journey. The organ opening is so ethereal, it is almost other-worldly, while the jangly guitar riffs root you firmly to earth. By the time Bono has finished lamenting tearing “down the walls that hold me inside,” I am halfway out the door.—Stephanie Elizondo Griest

36) Katmandu (1975)

Artist: Bob Seger

Songwriter: Seger

Fact: Katmandu is also the name of a Bob Seger tribute band, which goes so far as to bill itself as “North America’s Premier Bob Seger tribute act.”—Bob Seger Tribute

Why I love it: When this record came out Kathmandu was the epitome of remote destinations and going there a rite of passage; I’ve been listening to this song for 30 years and it still makes me want to pack my bags. —Lynne Friedmann

35) Ramble On (1969)

Artist: Led Zeppelin

Songwriters: Jimmy Page/Robert Plant

Fact: J.R.R. Tolkein’s “Lord of the Rings” heavily influenced the lyrics, specifically the lines about “Mordor” and “Gollum.”

Why I love it: It’s exuberant, and when I was in my late teens and taking my first unchaperoned trips with friends, I cranked up the song constantly, and I fell in love with the idea of travel—of ‘going ‘round the world’—as an unscripted and spontaneous kind of rambling. —Jim Benning

34) California (1971)

Artist: Joni Mitchell

Songwriter: Mitchell

Fact: In an interview with Cameron Crowe, chatting about writing her “Blue” album, on which “California” was featured, Mitchell says: “At that period of my life, I had no personal defenses. I felt like a cellophane wrapper on a pack of cigarettes. I felt like I had absolutely no secrets from the world and I couldn’t pretend in my life to be strong. Or to be happy. But the advantage of it in the music was that there were no defenses there either.”—CameronCrowe.com

Why I love it: No song captures the feeling of being on the road and longing for home more than “California.” I even named my last book after a line in the song.—Laurie Gough

33) Radar Love (1973)

Artist: Golden Earring

Songwriters: George Kooymans/Barry Hay

Fact: In 2007, NASA played “Radar Love” during a wake-up call to crew members aboard the Space Shuttle Atlantic. The wife of one of the astronauts had requested it. It’s not the first time “Radar Love” has played in space. In 1997, it was also played during a wake-up call, this time to NASA’s Mars Pathfinder.—NASA

Why I love it: It’s hard to believe that a Dutch prog rock band would make one of the best driving songs of all time, but they pulled it off despite the fact it hails from a country without twisting mountain lanes or endless stretches of desert highway. The locomotive drumbeat and ringing ‘70s guitars put me in the passing lane back home to my baby every time.—Alex Basek

32) The Long and Winding Road (1970)

Artist: The Beatles

Songwriters: John Lennon/Paul McCartney

Fact: It was The Beatles’ 20th and final No. 1 hit in the United States.—Wikipedia

Why I love it: “It’s about the flip side of travel—not the being gone, but the coming home—and every time I hear it, I’m stabbed with nostalgia. It gives me the same sense of bittersweet relief that I feel when my flight back to Minnesota comes in at night and I can see the first lights of home sparkling beneath the wings. But it makes me picture a home I never had—a white cottage in a green pasture somewhere, an image as sweet as a Mother’s Day card. I always imagined it in Ireland, somehow. Turns out, McCartney had Scotland in mind. Close enough.—Catherine Watson

31) American Girl (1977)

Artist: Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers

Songwriter: Petty

Fact: UGO.com ranked the use of “American Girl” in the movie “The Silence of the Lambs” as No. 5 in its Top 11 Uses of Classic Rock in Cinema countdown.

Why I love it: It isn’t classically travel, but it sounds like such a driving song. Plus I’ve always loved listening to it in far off places: “She couldn’t help thinking that there was a little more to life somewhere else…”—Sarah Schmelling

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