7 songs about car crashes

James Dean was commemorated by The Beach Boys in their song “A Young Man Is Gone.” Hulton Archive/Stringer/Getty Images

We dedicated the May/June 2023 issue of Hagerty Drivers Club magazine to the deep connections between music and cars, including several fun lists featuring your favorite car songs. Come back often or click the Music & Cars tag to stay up to date on these stories as they roll out online. You can also jam with our custom Music & Cars playlist on Spotify, available here.

Hard-partying musicians are certainly well represented among the millions who’ve died in car crashes, but perhaps none of the songs written about such accidents has been as eerily prescient as Jan & Dean’s “Dead Man’s Curve.” A 1963 hit about a street drag race gone wrong, it echoed loudly in memory when, in 1966, band member Jan Berry drove his Corvette into the back of a parked truck not far from the dangerous corner whose legend he and partner Dean Torrence had helped to cement. Berry and the band’s career were never the same.

The pride of El Sobrante, California, Primus scored its first hit in 1991 with “Jerry Was a Race Car Driver.” Penned by the punk-funk band’s virtuoso bass-playing leader, Les Claypool, it concerns an “I’ll show them” type of guy who’s in over his head and meets his end driving an Oldsmobile 4-4-2 too fast after many too many beers.

Here are seven more hits about fender-benders—and worse.

Jan & Dean
“DEAD MAN’S CURVE”

Well, the last thing I remember, Doc, I started to swerveAnd then I saw the Jag slide into the curveI know I’ll never forget that horrible sightI guess I found out for myself that everyone was rightWon’t come back from Dead Man’s Curve

Sounds a lot like the automotive equivalent of “you’ll shoot your eye out!”

 

Ray Peterson
“TELL LAURA I LOVE HER”

He drove his car to the racing groundsHe was the youngest driver thereAnd the crowed roared as they started the race‘Round the track they drove at a deadly paceNo one knows what happened that dayHow his car overturned in flamesBut as they pulled him from the twisted wreckWith his dying breath, they heard him say . . .

” . . . I probably should have eased into this whole racing thing. Maybe some SCCA Solo, or just a high-performance driving experience to see if racing was right for me.”

 

Dave Edmunds
“CRAWLING FROM THE WRECKAGE”(Graham Parker cover)

Crawling from the wreckage, crawling from the wreckageBits of me are scattered in the trees and on the hedgesCrawling from the wreckage, crawling from the wreckageInto a brand new car

How’s about you crawl into that ambulance first? Then we can talk about a new car.

 

David Bowie
“ALWAYS CRASHING IN THE SAME CAR”

Every chance,Every chance that I takeI take it on the roadThose kilometers and the red lightsI was always looking left and rightOh, but I’m always crashingIn the same car

Maybe less looking left and right, and more eyes forward? Try that for a while.

 

Mark Dinning
“TEEN ANGEL”

Teen angel, teen angel, teen angel, oohThat fateful night the car was stalled upon the railroad trackI pulled you out and we were safe, but you went running back

PSA: Don’t tug on Superman’s cape. Don’t spit into the wind. Don’t mess with the Lone Ranger’s mask. And never, ever, crawl back into a car when a train is barreling down on it.

 

The Beach Boys
“A YOUNG MAN IS GONE” (about James Dean)

For this daring young starMet his death while in his carNo one knows the reason why

Obviously, The Beach Boys don’t read Wikipedia, because it says exactly why right there.

 

They Might Be Giants
“MINK CAR”

I got hit by a mink car
Hit by a mink car
Driven by a guitar
And the silver chauffeur says
That it’s all in your head

Or . . . it might be in that toad you just licked.

 

***

 

This article first appeared in Hagerty Drivers Club magazine. Click here to subscribe and join the club.

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Comments

    I have one nobody has thought of. Seven Little Girls Sittin’ in the Back Seat (with Fred)!
    Keep your eyes on the road, keep your hands on the wheel, we’re just sittin’ in the backseat huggin’ and kissin with Fred. Fred was a Basset dog!

    Whil there was no crash, the chance of it was possible if the driver kept turning around to see the seven little puppies, huggin’ and kissin’ with Fred!

    I was a minute behind you…..real music from a great performer.

    BJ the DJ, you’re living much too fast, if you don’t change your ways, you won’t ever last.

    Bold tires, early morning…wet road? BJ signed off that morning while his mom waited for him to come on the radio at ‘a little country station.’

    My favorite, unrelated here, is The Minutemen are Turning in their Graves…..an anti-protest protest song. Good stuff

    I know it’s about a motorcycle crash and not a car crash, but “Bat Out of Hell” by Meat Loaf is one of the most violent songs of that type. Any song where the victim’s heart is torn from his body has to rate a mention. Jim Steinman candidly stated that his aim was to create the ultimate car crash song, and Todd Rundgren’s effort with his guitar to create the illusion of a motorcycle engine makes it worth listening to.

    DOA (Bloodrock ~1973) isn’t about a car crash, it’s about a plane crash:
    “I remember, we were flying low and hit something in the air, I remember…”

    Wreck on the Highway, an old bluegrass song. Sample lyrics: There was whisky and blood altogether, mixed with glass where they lay,Death played her hand in destruction, but I didn’t hear nobody pray.

    “THUNDER ROAD” is almost MANDATORY for this list!!! Dan, I think you have it backwards : Steve McQueen was trying to be the Robert Mitchum of his time!! Especially for us who saw “Thunder Road” before 1960!!

    Teen Angel is the archetype of the genre, followed closely by “Tell Laura I Love her” and “Dead Mans Curve”.
    I call it “Death Rock”…

    I haven’t heard any on the radio for a very long time.

    How about “Sunday Driving” by Jerry Lewis? My grandmother had the ‘78 vinyl and we played it all time just to hear Jerry’s wacky voice.

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