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Recommend some upbeat / high-energy music that, if I listen to it in my car, will make me want to roll the windows down and drive at unsafe speeds
Spring is here (at least in the northern hemisphere, sorry Aussies and Kiwis) and it's now warm enough where I live to roll the windows down while driving.
I'm looking to expand my playlist of, like I said in the title, music that will make me want to roll my windows down, turn the volume up, and exceed the speed limit.
For an idea of what I'm looking for, here's some tracks on my current playlist. This skews towards metal because of my own personal tastes, but I'd welcome recommendations from any genre:
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Bathory - 109 and Death from Above (paired songs about bombing a city in WW2, from the perspective of a German Me-109 fighter pilot and a B-17 Flying Fortress bombing crew)
ahem
Death Grips
It goes it goes it goes it goes...
Do you like B L A C K I E All Caps, With Spaces?
Here's a similar Tildes thread from a couple weeks ago that probably has a lot of overlap with what you're asking about. I contributed! :)
If there's one song I'm going to break a speed limit to, it's this, but for good measure:
Kyuss - Hurricane
Acid Bath - Toubabo Koomi
Bosse-de-Nage - Sword Swallower
Wha what? Kyuss and Acid Bath in the same comment. Great bands and excellent choices. Mine is always Whitewater by Kyuss and Bleed Me an Ocean by AB. Great stuff.
I was a high school freshman when I heard the Gardenia riff for the first time, my life hasn’t been the same since.
So, to go for some different genres...
When I think of high energy music, Drum 'n' Bass (D'n'B) is what comes first to mind.
One album that always pumps me up is Pendulum's Immersion (I usually start it from the third track, Watercolor).
There's a lot in the subgenre of Melodic D'n'B that I think is high energy and upbeat enough (I'm honestly not a big fan of some of the wobble base—"wubwubwub"—associated with some alternative Electronic, Techno, Dubstep, etc.). Pendulum has some of that, but not all their tracks overlap with the Techno/Dubstep vibe.
My favorite track of theirs is probably Girl in the Fire, but a lot of their albums and singles are great to drive to.
Some other high-energy electronic music genres that spring to mind are Electronic Dance and Trance. Some Trance subgenres (e.g., Psychedelic, Vocal) are rather high energy and make good driving music, too, IMO.
Tubeless (Lish Remix)
Nilaya (Melicia Remix)
Down at the Crossroads
Out There
Several Infected Mushroom albums have that one track that seems to intentionally defy genre—touching on Psychedelic Rock, Dance, Industrial Techno with some guitar, violin, piano, and mouth sounds for good measure—these are probably my all-time favorite high-energy tracks to drive to (though not necessarily as uplifting as other music):
Project 100
The Messenger 2012
Heavyweight
Blue Swan 5
Punk Weight
Giving Bad People Good Ideas
This is Your Face On Dogs
I wasn’t expecting to see Machine Girl in this thread.
Champion of My Heart by Carlos Knight & The Bay City Boys --
A year or so ago I made a mix of exercise montage music.
Full List
Here's some stuff that regularly hits the playlists for the windows-down drives, unsafe or not. These seem obvious to me, most are super popular, but then, you never know your audience. 50M+ views isn't as big as it used to be.
Because it kind of fits in with some of the stuff you mentioned, have you ever been listening to Led Zep and thought "I do like this, but I have heard it all and I'd like to hear something the same, but different"?
Greta Van Fleet are here to solve that problem
At first I thought they were just ripping off Zep but they're a legitimately good band who just happen to sound a lot like early Zeppelin. Apparently both Page and Plant have heard them and were impressed.
Inspired by their use in films. Not difficult, but bonus for points the films I'm thinking of:
A bunch by Squarepusher I'll drop, they always wind me up:
Planet Gear, it's more... upbeat, but definitely high engergy
Dark Steering, there's obviously a vibe here in the title
Rayc Fire 2
Meshuggah's The Demon's Name is Surveillance, blast this one and try not to pretend you're trying to out-drive surveillance drones. Really, all of Koloss.
Rammstein - Mein Land, it's actually one of the more driving songs from their discography. Similar suggestions would be "Feuer Frei," "Zerstören." I'd understand not taking any of these as Rammstein is very mechanical and plodding, too.
Unsafe speeds, eh? Eurobeat is basically canonical. ;)
DREAMERS - Insomniac
Foals - The Runner
Enter the Haggis - To The Quick
And some selected tracks from soundtracks:
TENET (Ludwig Göransson - Rainy Night in Tallinn
Inception (Hans Zimmer) - Mobasa
Cyberpunk 2077 (P.T. Adamczyk) - The Rebel Path
Note: I don't typically listen to the lyrics much; I just focus on the emotion and sound. So my recommendations aren't based on the lyrics at all.
Driving fast you say? Or maybe something a bit faster?. Also because you mentioned a song of the same name, how about this version of The Chain?
Just as an aside, the late, great DJ John Peel once suggested that if there was such a thing as "Intelligent dance music" then there ought to also be such a thing as stupid dance music. On that note there's always this nonsense (it's not about drugs jk it's totally about drugs)
Ow, that stupid dance music hurt my face, then it hurt my brain. Disturbingly catchy. If I find myself listening to it again I'm coming for you. ;)
So the funny thing about that is, The Shamen were a pretty big band on the early acid house scene. The singer/rapper, Mr C, ran one of the UK's more important nightclubs, The End (both Roni Size and Fatboy Slim had residencies there).
Ebeneezer Goode with it's catchy chorus "E's are good" (definitely not about ecstasy tablets, aka 'e's) hit no.1 in the UK chart during the BBC's own "drug awareness week". Pearls were clutched up and down the country, and the kids (including me) thought the whole thing was hilarious. But stupid or not, that track was instrumental in bringing acid house out of the underground raves and into the mainstream.
Performing live on the national chart/pop show, Top of the Pops, under pressure from the BBC to remove drug references Mr C changed the line "has anyone got any veras?" (Vera Lynns > skins > rolling papers) to "has anyone got any underlay?" which he claimed was a rug reference. That's the kind of stupid I can definitely get behind.
So yeah, it's stupid. But it was still an important record for a number of reasons, and it's still a good tune despite being dumb as a rock. Can I still remember all the words, almost 30 years later? Of course I can. He's ever so good..
The DJ Zinc track is a rock solid jump-up jungle classic and if you dropped it at any drum and bass night the crowd should go nuts. Or go home.
Disturbed - Indestructible
As for metal, this song feels like flooring it and turning on the afterburner. It feels like accellerating to ridiculous speeds and then calmly cruising onwards.
Emperor - Ye Entrancemperium
Also, putting on any Strapping Young Lad album will probably help as well. Some samples:
Relentless
Beneath The Waves
(City is a fantastic album for this purpose!)
Try some Igorrr as well since it's hyperactive, sometimes plain stupid and fun as hell! It's equal parts French folk, baroque classical, metal, breakcore and incoherent screaming, and it's great for racing across the country like a mad psychopath who just escaped a high security asylum while being followed by just about every policeman available.
Igorrr - Musette Maximum
On a more mellow metal note, there's the proggy Intronaut with Digital Gerrymandering with a fantastic instrumental outro. Used to be my favorite summertime windows-open touring music
Finally, capping off with some catchy hyperactive trolls on crack; Finntroll with Maktens Spira. It's whimsical, super not serious and still pretty fun music to listen to. (I do recommend getting used to the folky bits fast as there's a lot of it)
There is already a lot going on in here and while I have many examples in my library to choose from, I'm gonna leave you with my number one choice.
Pond - Fantastic Explosion of Time
If you aren't going 110 mph by the 1:30 mark, you better have a damn good excuse.
If you want to go into that zen-like driving trance where you arrive at your destination without remembering how you got there, check out Mushroom Lake.
Static-X - Cannibal
Clawfinger - Hate Yourself With Style
Freedom dive (techno)
At the speed of light (techno)
Hatred (Disbelief OST) (Undertale soundfont/16-bit)
Nechael Nechabarren (Uploaded by Mister kaze): Painful retribution (Also in the Undertale soundfont. The word "Last stand" comes to mind.)
Uploaded by AlgorStorm83: Night of nights (Video game remix, fast beats)
F-777: Ludicrous speed (techno)
F-777: Space battle (techno, this one hypes the most personally.)
Spock's Beard - At The End Of The Day
Warning: Do not use to breach warp barrier, we can't bring you back...
If you are a fan of synthwave-type music, the YouTube channel ThePrimeThanatos has some nice playlists you could look to for inspiration and sourcing.