The Best Playlist Right Now for a Summer Road Trip

New month, new music! Our correspondent Julie Chang Murphy has created the perfect music playlist of what to listen to in the month of June 2020, and the theme is music for a summer road trip. Turn the key, put the top down, and press play.

What’s The Best Playlist for a summer road trip?

It’s funny how memories of that quintessential summer road trip transform and evolve over the years.

What is, at first, a remembrance of torturous swaths of time listening to your parents’ music or elbowing your siblings to stay on their side, becomes something like wistful nostalgia and even a badge of honor.

Driving in a car (or being held captive in the backseat, as the case may be) across highways and small town roads for hours and days propels you into the ranks of great American literary pioneers like Walt Whitman, Jack Kerouac and Cheryl Strayed.

What’s more American than a road trip?

“Whither goest thou, America, in thy shiny car in the night?” Kerouac writes in On the Road.

This summer, as restrictions lift across the states, the answer is likely somewhere as humble as Mom and Dad’s house two states away. Camping in a National Park. Or a rented cottage on the beach.

We have mostly taken the highway for granted. But as we fill up the gas tank, now, more than ever, it once again represents freedom and possibility.

The perfect playlist of music for a summer road trip

If you’re hitting the road, you’re going to need an inspiring playlist to channel the mood! Classic road trip songs but also, some of the hottest songs of summers past and present to feed that “top down, wind in your hair” feeling. Press play and you’ll be there before you know it.

Let’s do this!

That’s it! Our top picks for what to listen to in the month of June 2020 (or really anytime you decide to embark on an iconic summer road trip). Did we miss any of your favorite windows-down-open-road tunes? 

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Crediting her training as a cultural anthropologist at Wellesley College, Julie has immersed herself in various industries in the last 15 years including fashion design, event planning, fitness and even investigating police misconduct. Julie lives in NYC where she loves trying every ramen and dumpling restaurant with her husband and three children. She finds joy in bold prints, biographies of fierce women, kickboxing and spending way too long finding the perfect polish color to express her mood.

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