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Life is a Highway: AMA’s Road Trip Playlist

By Sandra Sperounes

There’s nothing better than blasting down the highway with your loved ones and some amazing tunes.

We want to help you make the most of your next adventures, so we’ve created a Spotify playlist of road trip songs. This is the first in our series of soundtracks curated by Alberta musicians, our family of AMA employees and members. Got a favourite road tune? Send your suggestion to amainsider@ama.ab.ca.

For our first playlist, we asked staff for their music must-haves. Like any family, their choices span a mish-mash of styles—from country to electronica, from Calgary singer-songwriters to Cuban-born pop stars, from classic rock to modern hits.

But we can all agree on one thing. “The best driving songs are the ones that you can belt out the lyrics as if you’re the only person on the road,” says Jacinda Gran, who works for AMA’s Automotive Services.

For insurance advisor Tara Tiller, Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody is the ultimate driving song—followed closely by I Want to Break Free and We Are The Champions.

“A little bit of Queen goes very far with my family,” she says. “Of course, we all think we can sing better than Freddie Mercury.”

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Technical writer Louise Praught prefers a good ol’ Canadian classic. “Have you even really gone on a road trip if you haven’t played Tom Cochrane’s Life is a Highway”? she asks. Performance specialist Steve Welliver likes to mix up his playlist, including Sheryl Crow’s meandering All I Wanna Do, Zamfir’s relaxing pan-flute ditty, The Lonely Shepherd, and Metallica’s frenzied seven-minute epic, The Four Horsemen.

“You can travel quite a distance in seven minutes,” he says. “You may be doing 100 km/hour when the song starts, but if you’re not careful, you could be going a bit faster by the time the song is over.”

Not that we want you to speed. We know it’s tempting, especially since so many musicians encourage us to put the pedal to the metal—think of Tracy Chapman’s Fast Car, The Eagles’ Life in the Fast Lane or even Madonna’s Ray of Light.

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We want you to have fun on the road and stay safe. Here are a few more practical tips from Ryan Lemont, manager of Driver Education:

• Start your playlist before you drive off or, if you’re feeling generous, give the DJ duties to one of your passengers. Don’t get distracted by your vehicle’s infotainment systems.

• Don’t listen to something too slow or sleepy—we don’t want you nodding off behind the wheel.

• Make sure you can still hear emergency vehicles on the road.

Now, in the immortal words of Ric Ocasek of The Cars: “Let the good times roll!”