Cars and guitars

A weeks ago, I went to dinner with a good friend of mine at a great local Irish restaurant called the Shanachie. We chatted for a while of this and that. Our food had just arrived when she drew my attention to something unusual.

"Is that Bohemian Rhapsody?" she said suddenly, staring up at the speaker above her head. My spoon, lifted halfway from my bowl of soup, paused in midair as I stopped and listened. Since the Shanachie is basically a pub, the stuff that gets played there tends to be usual jigs'n'reels'n'hornpipes. But this. This was...

"It is," I said, awed. We sat in reverent silence, listening to Queen's classic rock epic being played by fiddles and accordions and tinwhistles. It was demented. And wrong. And possibly one of the coolest things I've ever heard.

After it ended, my friend observed that Bohemian Rhapsody is one of those songs that you just automatically know the words to, regardless of whether or not you're actually into Queen, and you always have to sing along when you hear it.

This got me to thinking about car songs. You have favorite songs, and you have favorite car songs, but they aren't necessarily the same songs. It might be a song by one of your favorite bands, but it might not be the one you would say was your favorite from them. In some cases it's even a band you don't really care for at all.

For instance, I may be flamed for saying this, but I don't really get the hype over Kings of Leon. I don't dislike them, exactly. They seem like a decent band, and I like the singles I've heard, but that's about as far as my interest goes. However, I freely admit that their song Use Somebody is a terrific, cheesy, fist-pumping lighter-waving arena rock anthem. Something about it is so infectious (the conveniently all-inclusive vocal range? the whoa-oa-oa bit? who the hell knows?) that you just have to sing along. And apparently, I'm not the only one who feels that way--everyone from Nickelback to Paramore has been covering the blasted thing lately. (I like the one from Bat for Lashes.)

But what else makes something a good car song? Sometimes it's something you can't sing at all, and therein lies the appeal. Regina Spektor's song Fidelity is like that. Deep down inside you know that nobody can really replicate Regina's vocal acrobatics, but it doesn't stop you from trying. Or with some songs, forget the lead, it's all about the harmonies. Most anything from the Beatles is like that for me.

Sometimes it's just the weirdness factor. I like Amanda Palmer's song Leeds United simply because it allows me to drive around with the windows down, roaring about how the sandwiches are wicked and they know me at the Mac store. I also cheerfully mangle all of the words to Nightwish's song Wishmaster--I've never been able to hear it the same way since I saw this video.

I never did find out who that band was covering Bohemian Rhapsody...