The Most Name-Dropped Automotive Brands in Music Lyrics

Data mining! The London-based firm Uswitch analyzes web data like no one else.  And to demonstrate their abilities, in 2020 they prepared a list (maybe the best list to date!) of the most car makes mentioned in song lyrics and the artists who mention car makes the most. 

How is popular culture and automoibilty connected?  What does this say about an object of desire and consumer preferences as conditioned by what is listened to?  How does an inanimate object infuse into the human spirit?

See the post here: https://www.uswitch.com/car-insurance/guides/most-name-dropped-cars-in-music/

Top Ten Rankings:

1. Mercedes -- 16,415 songs

2. Lamborghini -- 9546

3. Bentley -- 8474

4. Ferrari -- 7212

5. Porsche -- 6874

6. BMW -- 5807

7. Audi -- 4056

8. Honda -- 3608

9. Tesla -- 3316

10. Rolls-Royce -- 2556

A few comments about this list. Note that with the exception of Honda, Asian cars are absent -- Toyota, Nissan, Mitsubishi, Kia, Hyundai. Also what is striking is the total absence of American cars! Considering that at the beginning of the 20th century the Ford Model T  was ever present in popular culture, and that at the beginnings of Rock and Roll in the 1950s the Cadillac, Oldsmobile Rocket 88, and other US models were at the heart of the emerging genre. 

Cars and Rock and Roll

            It is not surprising that the automobile was at the center of artistic enterprise during the 1950s, given its place in popular thought, its presence throughout our society, including in everyday life, and its importance economically. It was particularly significant in the emergence of the new music of the 1950s, rock and roll, as well as integral to the plot and backdrop of many films, and as the stage upon which literary drama and self-discovery was played out. However, no form of popular artistic expression celebrated the automobile and the highway with more feeling than rock and roll. This vast body of music, difficult to define and ever-changing, often featured themes derived from the automobile. Furthermore, even a cursory examination of record jackets starting with the 1950s reveals an astonishing number that feature the photographs of “cool” cars.⁷⁷ Rock music praised the car, and its performers drew on the wealth that followed success to buy cars that were excessive and extravagant. These materialistic values characterize popular music performers today.⁷⁸

            For rock and roll performers who had beaten the odds and had “made it,” much like Hollywood film stars of the 1920s and 1930s, cars and fame went hand in hand. Just as love from the opposite sex followed famous musicians who had become famous, so too cars became the object of artists’ love. Loving women and loving cars could be convoluted together in a confusing and complicated way in this new music of the 1950s, as exemplified in the words of Chuck Berry’s “Maybelline”.⁷⁹

            It was at the mid-point of the decade, the year of the Chevy V-8, the Forward Look, and the introduction of the Ford Thunderbird, that rock and roll began to influence American life in a profound way. With its energy, rock moved listeners, as did the automobile, in ways that intimately touched the soul. Rock conveyed messages that could be individually interpreted, as did custom cars and hot rods.

            Richard A. Peterson provides a deft explanation of why rock music emerged when it did in an article entitled “Why 1955?”⁸⁰ Peterson diminishes the importance of the appearance of individual artistic genius that would include Chuck Berry and Elvis, and the role of the Baby Boomer generation in his analysis. Rather, he stresses legal, technological, and organizational changes, without dismissing the role of historical continuity between earlier Blues and Country and Western forms of music and rock. 

            The introduction of new technology was a part of the rock and roll and automobile story of the 1950s. Transitioning away from 78 RPM records made of shellac to 33 and 1/3 RPM vinyl discs, and especially with the 45 RPM, the format for music changed dramatically after WWII. The immensely popular and inexpensive 45 RPM record shortened the length of a recording to approximately three minutes or less. 

            New automobile radio designs were integrally connected to the new length of musical performances. Push button radios, introduced in the late 1930s but popular by the 1950s, enabled listeners to switch from station to station as they made choices while sitting at a traffic light.⁸¹ Since red lights are generally set for 100 seconds and green lights for 60 seconds, the pause enabled riders to listen and switch songs with minimal distractions. Indeed, the push button and signal-seeking auto radios of the 1950s were like juke boxes on wheels.⁸²

            Finally, the transistor radio was introduced as a portable car radio in the mid-1950s and made optional equipment in cars beginning in 1955. Lighter, generating less heat, incorporating improved automatic volume control, and with fewer electronic components to go wrong, car audio began its ascent in importance in American culture.

            With the FCC greatly increasing the number of AM radio licenses after 1947, stations rapidly doubled in number. Previously, national networks had dominated radio, and these network-affiliated stations had used their own bands and orchestras, rather than recorded music. Now the airwaves were open to any musician who had recorded his work. An all-popular music format was first adopted at KWOH in Omaha, Nebraska, in 1949, and the same station went to a “Top 40” format in 1953. These programming ideas caught on elsewhere rather quickly. In sum, all the prerequisites were in place for a revolution in modern music directed at an emerging youth culture. 

            Beyond broadcasting changes and a transition that took place in the material culture of the music industry, another important technological development was the introduction of the electric guitar. Beginning in 1946, Leo Fender improved the electric guitar in terms of eliminating feedback.⁸³ His Telecaster was later replaced in 1954 with the Stratocaster. Competition came from Gibson with the Les Paul guitar, first produced in 1952. With either guitar, the artist could now play high frets with emotion, and in the process exude sexuality while on stage. One cannot imagine rock and roll, with its pace and tones, without the electrification of musical instruments. The electric guitar enabled artists to break new ground and become showmen in the process.

            While the origins of modern rock are somewhat nebulous and remain controversial, it is clear that its form and content had roots in the work of several Blues artists, including Robert Johnson. Historian E.L. Widmer and others suggested that Jackie Brenston and the Kings of Rhythm song “Rocket 88,” produced on March 5, 1951, in Memphis on the Chess label, was the first to bring together the various elements now associated with modern rock.⁸⁴ Later, Ike Turner would receive credit for its words. The Oldsmobile 88 was a new kind of post-war automobile, one with an overhead V-8 engine, yet light and usually stripped down, closer to a Chevrolet than an Oldsmobile 98. For its day, the 88 was fast and clean. An advertisement in 1950 exclaimed, “you’ve got to drive it to believe it.”

            The fuzzy guitar in the song, the consequence of amplifier that had fallen out of the trunk of a car before the recording session in Memphis, was one distinctive aspect of “Rocket 88” that made it unique. And the pace of the piano segment in the song foretold the performances of Jerry Lee Lewis. 

            Chess Records’ Sam Phillips, who was known for his discovery of both Elvis Presley and Jerry Lee Lewis, would later assert that the recording of “Rocket 88” marked the birth of rock. Bill Halley and his Saddlemen played it as well, a reflection of the lack of color lines that was characteristic of rock and roll, ironic at time when the color line was perhaps drawn tighter than ever in American life. 

            The success of “Rocket 88” was followed by many similar songs, including a follow-up number by Brenston himself called “Real Gone Rocket” (July 1951), that flopped. As E. L. Widmer has so adeptly chronicled, Chess Records followed with Betty Love’s “Drop Top” (November 1951), Rosco Gordon’s “T-Model Boogie” (December 1951), Howlin Wolf’s “Cadillac Daddy” (January 1952), Johnny London’s “Drivin’ Slow” (March 1952), and Joe Hill Louis’s “Automatic Woman” (September 1953). “Cadillac Daddy” was one of many songs about Cadillacs written during the post-WWII era, but down deep in the lyrics, one can discern a fearful and subservient tone, so prevalent on the part of Blacks towards Whites along Route 61 in Mississippi. 

            The Blues tradition was an important – and indeed a necessary – precursor to a song that undoubtedly is the first true rock and roll tune – “Maybellene,” performed by the great Chuck Berry in 1955. Berry, borrowing from the old song “Ida Red,” spun the tale of a car chase and a troubled love affair. The song has been carefully dissected and analyzed by Warren Belasco, on a level that is undoubtedly far deeper than Berry was ever thinking while he penned the lines to the music.⁸⁵ Driving a modified Ford V8, our hero pursues his woman who is riding in a Cadillac. For a time the focus is on the woman, then it shifts to the car, and the real question is, which is more important? The song alternates between describing the vehicle and the woman. Berry invents a new word – “motorvating” – which he is doing in his Ford before he sees his two loves, the woman and the Cadillac Coupe Deville. A chase subsequently follows, only ending after a shower cools the Ford, enabling him to catch the female and the car. “Maybellene” merged Black and White musical traditions, as perhaps only a St. Louis performer like Chuck Berry could do. It is suggestive in terms of sexuality, but leaves much to the imagination. Somehow, if we are to believe Berry, a Ford can keep up with a Cadillac. In sum, “Maybellene” was energetic and happy, unlike the typical Blues fare of the day.

            In “Maybellene” and the others that followed related to automobiles, Berry conveyed to his audience the joy of driving. A later (1964) popular hit, “No Particular Place to Go,” continued to extol the sheer exuberance of riding, without purpose or specific goals. Berry’s artistic genius – apart from the humor that is embedded in his lyrics – was that he somehow knew that Americans were restless and seeking a kind of happiness that only the automobile and the highway could provide. It might not last, but escape from our environment and ourselves was part and parcel of the 1950s music scene and beyond.