Bonnie Raitt’s ultimate road trip playlist
If there’s one thing seasoned musicians know a thing or two about, it’s life on the road. Traversing across countries and even continents really isn’t too shabby a trade-off for rock and roll rapture, but it is still admittedly a bit of a thankless task trying to while away the hours heading from one stop to the next. There are, of course, some things that can help you through it – a banging road trip playlist being the prime example – and who better to queue up the songs than Bonnie Raitt?
The American blues singer is the perfect compere of road trip hits because she knows exactly the ingredients that make a song a smash. She spent years honing her craft before breaking out with Nick of Time – her tenth album, no less – which saw her rocket to the big leagues with a legion of awestruck fans in tow. But what came before would have been countless hours of merciless slog, and clearly, Raitt is no stranger to the back of a tour bus because her picks for life on the road sum up just that.
An apt place to begin would be the catalyst song for Raitt’s own supersonic writing, ‘Fast Car’ by Tracy Chapman. She said she “love[s] Tracy, love[s] this story. There’s simply no one like her. Her breakthrough success heartened me so much, gave me inspiration making my Nick of Time album.” Speaking of early inspirations, also making the list is ‘Hitch Hike’ by Marvin Gaye, extolling the labours of having dreams but no luck on your side. It’s no wonder they resonate with Raitt, having harnessed so much energy to be where she is now.
It’s also plain to see that she knows music mastery when she hears it, and clearly, she’s a fan of Jackson Brown. She picks out two of his hits – ‘The Road’ and ‘Running on Empty’ – as road trip favourites because his voice “sings to [her] heart”. Of the tunes as a pair, she noted: “The one-two punch of these two Jackson songs back-to-back on the Running on Empty album really nailed it for those of us living this gypsy life.” On that same travelling wavelength, Raitt also singles out the likes of ‘Night Train’ by James Brown and ‘On the Road Again’ by Canned Heat as the epitomes of what road trip life is all about.
That said, it’s, of course, not the most conventional lifestyle. As Raitt said herself, it takes a certain type of free spirit to really be pulled into not only music but all the travelling tribulations that come with it. But from an early stage, she seemed to be enraptured, with ‘Key to the Highway’ by Big Bill Broonzy, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee being the first country blues song she ever heard, and ‘You Can’t Catch Me’ by Chuck Berry, whom she has “a lifelong love affair” with, drawing her towards a life of stardom – and there was no looking back.
However, that level of energy obviously has to be channelled somewhere, and for Raitt, the obvious route was the stage. In that vein, she picks Jr Walker and the All Stars’ ‘(I’m a) Road Runner’ as holding a special place in her heart, so much so that she and her band “do this song live, and it never ceases to fire everyone up.” But in an ode to free spirits, there’s no better conclusion to the playlist than Steppenwolf’s ‘Born to be Wild’, the “danger, speed, rebellion, [and] escape” of which, said Raitt, was “just what drew us to rock and roll in the first place.”
A road trip is a muse of inspiration for anyone, but in that sense, for rockstars, it has that extra romantic glow. Bonnie Raitt isn’t one of the best singers and guitar slingers of her generation for nothing because, evidently, she has a striking eye for the perfect songs to encapsulate her experiences. Planes, trains, and automobiles, these tunes will get you through.
Bonnie Raitt’s road trip playlist
- Tracy Chapman – ‘Fast Car’
- Jackson Brown – ‘The Road’
- James Brown – ‘Night Train’
- Marvin Gaye – ‘Hitch Hike’
- Canned Heat – ‘On the Road Again’
- Jackson Brown – ‘Running on Empty’
- Big Bill Broonzy – ‘Key to the Highway’
- Chuck Berry – ‘You Can’t Catch Me’
- Jr Walker and the All Stars – ‘(I’m a) Road Runner’
- Steppenwolf – ‘Born to be Wild’
