When we were living in Japan we made a rule that we had to do a monthly trip that required us to stay out of our apartment for a minimum of one night per month. Our family of four found ourselves in our tiny car for hours on end, multiple weekends trying to explore as much of our new country as we could. In an effort (always a Herculean effort) to pry our kids eyes off their screens and out the window to see this new country, we found ourselves in a new battle of what music to listen to. At the time we had one boy who was into Minecraft music, like literally the annoying music that plays in the videogame’s background, another boy who wanted to hear the Pokémon theme song on repeat, a husband that unfortunately seriously likes Iron Maiden and any other song with men screaming about horrible things (yes there must be some underlying issues there) and me loving any Taylor Swift or boy band song topping the pop charts and randomly some country. The struggle is real. We decided to make a family playlist.
The rules were simple. Three of the four of us had to vote the song onto the “Amidei Family Road Trip Playlist”. Surprisingly, we found songs, like a lot of songs, that we all love and have at the ready of a tap of the phone to play anytime. This was 6 years ago and we still hit up that playlist several times a month. For us it includes a lot of Imagine Dragons, oldies the kids obviously love too (or they wouldn’t have voted for it) like The Who, Van Morrison, and Neil Young. There is everything from Frank Sinatra to Chris Stapleton, Toto to Awolnation. Currently there are 75 songs on the playlist (we’ve been continually building it over the years) which is more than 5 hours of music.
We play it camping, hot tubbing, while playing cards, and of course road tripping. It doesn’t get old because it is such an eclectic mix of music and while there are just a couple on there that aren’t my favorite (looking at you Johnny Cash and A Boy Named Sue) so many are our mutual favorites and can take us collectively back to a particular experience, like Led Zeppelin’s Over the Hills and Far Away takes us straight to the ski hill.
My advice if you decide to give the family playlist a try (we just use Apple Music so it’s shared on all our devices) don’t vote in songs you really don’t want to. Don’t be the over accommodating, nice mom on this one. I promise you they won’t be voting in songs they don’t like either. It makes for great discussions and debates about what make each song special to us individually. I obviously still listen to my pop hits whenever I’m on my own just as my husband listens to butt rock and kids are now into rap, but it takes a rare gem to make it on the Amidei Family Road Trip playlist. Hitting "Shuffle" now.
You can try Amazon Music for free for 3 months with this link and get your own Family Playlist going now.
We use Spotify and did the same thing about 5 years ago. We drove to Gulf Shores Alabama and wanted something to keep us all singing at the top of our lungs. There are now just over 100 songs and it is so fun to play while we are together. I think we should have done the voting concept because there is definitely a few songs that are not for me! Thanks for sharing!!
Im starting this immediately! It’ll be a bit of a battle because there are only 2 votes but we do share in the love of car concerts!
I freaking love this - I made the playlist for our girls trip to KC in Spotify, but now it is gone and I'm SO sad! We have Amazon Music, maybe I should go there next :)
Although I will say, not sure we will get 2 of 3 to agree on a song!!!!