It’s late, and you’re tired, and there are miles and miles to go. You’re driving a car you love, despite its crappy gas mileage and the fact that your contemporaries are all driving hybrids. You cruise through highways and back roads, through marshes with your windows down, despite the sharp odor of salt water and decay. You drive downtown, but you’re just cognoscente of the motorcyclist in front of you not to hit him. Miles to go, and you’ve fallen into one of those hellishly contemplative moods, where thoughts race around your brain like a dog chasing its tail. Thoughts like: I wonder how I managed to either completely miss or downright toss away any chance at real love. But Jesus Christ, what would I have done if I had found it? The mood’s like a drug, endlessly depressing and endlessly fascinating. So this list is for you and your habit. Tonight, these songs are for you:
Top 5 songs for the late night, melancholy drive:
1. “Goodnight, California,” Kathleen Edwards
The real trick to this alt-rocker comes half way through at 3:06, when the actual singing stops, and the hypnosis begins.
2. “Overnight Drive (What Might Have Been),” *64
Made up of elements from Angry Salad, *64 continued the tradition of writing infectious pop/rock tunes. But “Overnight Drive” seems to perfectly encapsulate a feeling of loneliness that every touring musician must sometimes feel with simple but beautiful lyrics like, “A cigarette explodes on the highway in the dark.”
3. “One Headlight,” The Wallflowers; 4. “Can’t Run But,” Paul Simon
Both songs evoke a state of melancholly with a sense of urgency brought on by the songs’ tempos. For “One Healdlight,” it’s the droning guitar punctuated by bass and snare. In “Can’t Run But” you have Simon’s mello voice augmented by a near-frantic thumb piano.
5. “Wish You Were Here,” Pink Floyd
The fade-out at the end of this track makes you believe you could, at some point, simply run out of road and fade out among the stars.
Runners up: “Precious Things,” Tori Amos; “Dead Flowers (Live in Calgary),” Steve Earle (Rolling Stones cover);”Your Ex-Lover Is Dead,” Stars; “We Are Pilots,” Shiny Toy Guns; “Comfortably Numb,” Pink Floyd
Overnight Drive (What Might Have Been) (Sample download)
Top 5 songs for the late night, melancholy drive
A top five topic after my own heart…agreed on Kathleen. The live CBC version of that song is even more well-suited to this. I really need to get a permanent, non-streaming copy of the whole show.
Big Star’s Third/Sister Lovers album is filled with stuff that would be great for this: “Night Time,” “Stroke It Noel,” “Blue Moon…” I might just have to dig out my vinyl of this tonight.
I seriously have multiple playlists set up for this kind of mood, so instead of monopolizing your comments, I just might have to expand upon this on my own blog…
Weird – I don’t know why the Big Star album title showed up highlighted in tan below the rest of the comment.
I think this needs an Aimee Mann song. That’s what was playing when I hit into the moose going 60 mph at approximately 10 pm that fateful Friday night five years ago. It was a summer night much like the one your describe… Lost in Space I believe was the song that was playing.
The impact made it so I could not extract the CD from my car. I still miss it to this day but thought that if they’d make a movie about it, that’s the exact song that should have been playing.