Image via Complex Original
Your lot in life determines your vehicle, but you have total control over what you play while driving. So, if you want to take a look into one’s psyche, simply listen to his or her road trip soundtrack. That’s how it works, right psychologists? From metal heads to ravers, we can learn a lot about who we are by simply listening to the music. Buckle up for some sweeping, mostly unfair generalizations about your car stereo with What Your Driving Music Says About You.
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Country
You are probably a loyal fan of The Voice, a lot of fun at parties and—somewhat related—have to blow into a Breathalyzer to start your Chevy S10. No one in the game flexes harder in the YOLO category than country music fans. CMA Music Fest is basically a whiskey drunk version of Burning Man, only with omnipresent jean shorts and football jerseys. You need absolutely no help turning up.
That, or you're sulking like Adam Morrison after he lost in the NCAA tournament and are singing along to songs about that guy or girl who just smashed your heart like a cowboy boot on Busch Light can.
Dance
You’re probably driving a good 20-to-30 mph over the speed limit as a Tiesto joint rattles around the inside of your Nissan 350Z like a hailstorm of beat drops. Instead of headlights, you’ve installed an LED color board in your car’s grill and turned the back seat into a makeshift bottle service booth. Hanging out in your car is a lot of fun, but $500 for a magnum of Grey Goose is ridiculous.
Hard Rock
You can make your car glide gracefully while doing donuts in the Wal-Mart parking lot. Is that an out of control vehicle committing mid-level traffic violations or Tara Lipinski during the ’98 Olympics in Nagano? You can do most of your car’s mechanical work without any help and you once jumped a six-foot-wide creek in a rented Hertz for the fun of it. You’re 100% American badass.
Jam Bands
Your car smells like patchouli oil and sweaty feet. The gas light is perpetually lit. There’s a family of territorial opossums living in the trunk. That said, you’re jovial and typically generous about giving people rides. Hitchhikers don’t scare you, but roadblock checkpoints are absolutely terrifying.
Hip-Hop
Possibility one: After totaling your mom’s Chrysler Town & Country with a failed attempt at “ghost-riding the whip,” you’re reduced to cruising around town on a bicycle. That’s called riding real slow, homie.
Possibility two: You want all eyes on you. You use every watt and decibel available in your six-speaker, two-subwoofer Best Buy sound system, and you damn sure roll down every window all the way down (except for those damn child lock ones in the back) to make sure everybody can hear Nicki Minaj talk about her pussy and every other rapper talk about his magnum penis. And that's including when it's 27 degrees out, because there ain't no weather colder than those icy cubic zurconia earrings you have on.
Pop
Your parents are wildly annoyed whenever they’re in a car with you. Like, pops wishes he could just space out to NPR’s All Things Considered, but he has to listen to you wail about to a Katy Perry song instead. All is forgiven when the new Jason Derulo comes on, because that record bangs, even for decidedly swaggerless household patriarchs.
R&B
You’re using the silky vocals of Brian McKnight as an auditory aphrodisiac. Bae’s sitting shotgun and you think she’s a smooth bass line away from demanding you pull over at a truck stop to make love in the backseat. You have a very active imagination. You’re incredibly optimistic. And, you’re not that good at reading women, are you?
Death Metal
The steering wheel is a de facto drum set and your speakers are so fried that your car smells like an electrical fire. Your backseat is littered with unpaid parking tickets and your DGAF hubris about it is very hardcore.
Classical
You’re either an adjunct professor at the Julliard School of Music or a sociopathic serial killer. I’ve seen enough Francis Ford Coppola movies to know that woodwinds and grisly murder scenes go together like Antonio Cromartie and paternity suits.
Never get in a car with a stranger, particularly if he looks like Rob Reiner and he’s blasting Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata from a vintage Mercedes-Benz.
Hissing That Changes Pitch Like Whitney Houston When You Accelerate
If your car naturally sounds like an A$ap Ferg beat, then you probably have a busted transmission. So, what does that say about you? It says that you need to redline that beater to a mechanic before it spontaneously combusts on the freeway. It says that your car is laboring more than Ric Flair at the squat rack. It says that you’re a somewhat negligent car owner. Do better.
