“Do you know what it means to miss New Orleans?” Hearing zydeco takes me right back.
© Joyce McGreevy

Travel Memories Inspired by Music

Imagine a melody with the power to recreate worlds. The cocoa-butter scented breeze of a beach in Maui in 1979—when it’s 2020 and you’re in Montréal. The soaring elegance of a train station in Leipzig—as you drift off to sleep in Lincoln City.

That’s what happens when a tune, any tune, becomes travel music. Oh, I see: When it comes to modes of travel, nothing transports us like music.

The influence of music on our memories has long been established by science. Music lights up the visual cortex like a rainbow-colored disco ball, spinning emotions into motion. One moment you’re pushing a shopping cart down a grocery aisle, the next moment you hear that song—and suddenly travel memories inspired by music come dancing out, whirling you along with them.

At the office in January you hear a certain song, and suddenly it’s summer
and you’re barefoot on a beach in July.
© Joyce McGreevy

“Magical Mystery Tour”

Travel music can be a trickster. Like the time a song from a passing car in Chicago whisked me back to a village in France.

One chorus and I recalled the taste of  fresh croissants in Port Launay.
© Joyce McGreevy

So what was the song? Something iconic like “La Vie en Rose”? Pas du tout. 

It was “What’s Up” by 4 Non Blondes, an alternative rock band from San Francisco.

But to memory, none of that matters. Because of where and when I heard the song, the Jukebox of Memory selected it for my subconscious travel music playlist. Hearing it again, I’m instantly back in Port Launay in 1993:

• I taste buttery, cloud-like croissants—croissants so marvelous that I show up at the boulangerie each morning before sunup.
• I feel the thrum of my rented Citroën zipping over the back roads—I who haven’t driven in years.
• I see primroses around the cottage where my young son and I sit by the fire, reading Breton tales of the sea.

All that joie de vivre and Breton beauty magically preserved in an angsty California rock song. This kind of travel music mismatch, it turns out, is surprisingly common.

You turn on the radio in Des Moines and suddenly you’re in that little jazz club in Denmark . . .
© Joyce McGreevy

“Come Fly With Me” (and other musical flights of fancy)

Of course, some travel songs are on the nose. And by “nose” I mean the nose cone of a Boeing 707 pointing up at a big blue sky. That’s where I’m transported whenever I hear “Up, Up, and Away.”

Written by Jimmy Webb and popularized by The Fifth Dimension, it became Trans World Airlines’ theme song in 1968. Five notes in, I can practically smell the jet fuel, so vividly does this tune recall the joy of a travel adventure’s beginning.

Oh, I have a whole catalog in my head labeled Travel Music Linked to Airplanes. It’s where I keep travel memories that are . .

• Ecstatic: Art Garfunkel singing “Break Away, fly across your ocean . . . to awaken in another country.”
• Glamorous: Joe Sample’s jazz classic “Night Flight.”
• Wistful: Peter, Paul, and Mary’s “Leavin’ on a Jet Plane.”

Name any mode of transport and you’ll find travel songs for it. “Night Boat to Cairo,” “Last Train to Clarksville,” “On the Atchison, Topeka, and the Santa Fe” to name but a few.  Some travel songs, like “Let’s Get Away from It All,” with its boat to Bermuda, plane to Saint Paul and kayak to Quincy or Nyack, pack in every means of travel but the pogo stick.

“They Call Me the Wanderer”

Some music makes you want to travel somewhere, anywhere, even when you’re toolin’ around town on errands. Many a mild-mannered commuter has experienced raw wanderlust at hearing a classic road trip song like “Route 66” or “Born to Be Wild.”

Then there are songs that evoke longings for places we’ve never been. Like the Faroe Islands, which I researched obsessively after hearing Faroese singer-songwriter, Teitur. Indeed, millions of music lovers felt wanderlust for Cuba the first time they heard Buena Vista Social Club, the musical ensemble celebrated in the documentary of the same name.

“Summer in the City”

You could fill a library with songs about cities—from “Istanbul, Not Constantinople” and “New York State of Mind,” to two entirely different songs with the title “Galway Girl.”

With most destination concerts canceled in 2020, we travel via musical memories.
Above: Lollapalooza, Chicago in 2017.
© Julie Larkin

Great cities, in turn, send you home with memories to unpack musically. Any song by the late, great Alain Toussaint or young visionary Trombone Shorty takes me back to New Orleans—wherever I am. And this recently released music video stirs this traveler’s fond memories of a favorite U.S. city, Chicago. Let’s go!

“Take Me Home, Country Roads”

And sometimes travel music takes me all the way home. Home, where childhood memories and my love of travel began. Where my late parents spent evenings planning family travel adventures, as popular French songs floated up from the RCA record player, those Gallic melodies mixing with the aroma of Boeuf Bourguinon from the kitchen.

That’s why whenever I hear “La Vie en Rose” I’m instantly transported .  . . to Syosset, Long Island.

To quote French cabaret singer Maurice Chevalier, “Ah yes, I remember it well!” Whether your  travel memories inspired by music transport you to a favorite destination or to the land of childhood, the common “chord” is magic—the magic that occurs when travel memories have a soundtrack.

What’s on your travel music playlist? Share a favorite tune and the travel memories it evokes for you in the comments below.

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