7 songs about car crashes
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.
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What about D.O.A by Blackrock 1971.
Harry Chapin, “30,000 Pounds of Bananas”
What about “455 Rocket” by Kathy Mattea
“I’m telling you and I ain’t ashamed
I cried when that wrecker came
As we skid I thought I heard the angels sing
(Sounded like the Beach Boys)
We hit the curve and began to sail
Took out most of the safety rail
Even the cop asked me
“Man, what’d you have in that thing?”
I had a 455 Rocket
The very kind you drive
You oughta watch yourself when you take that turn
‘Cause she was made for the straight aways
She grew up hating Chevrolets
She’s a Rocket, she was made to burn
Lord, she’s a Rocket she was made to burn”
This is a motorcycle song/crash written by Leiber & Stoller in 1955 titled “Black Denim Trousers and Motorcycle Boots” by The Cheers. I hear it occasionally on Sirius/XM. It did go to #6 on Billboard.
Check out my spotify playlist “Songs About Cars” with over 200 songs, it’s the world’s most comprehensive playlist of automotive songs! Am I missing anything? https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1CAncLMcbFSirebrd1Nrfk?si=17f28aaae8e446ae
Hotrod Lincoln, close enough to a crash !!!!
Took a corner; sideswiped a truck,
Crossed my fingers just for luck.
My fenders was clickin’ the guardrail posts.
The guy beside me was white as a ghost.
Although shortly refered: “Every night we smash a Mercedes-Benz
First we run, and then we laugh ’til we cry” New Radicals 1998
How about ” My Killer Yugo ” or ” Death by Moped ” !