Playlist Deep Drive - Cab Driver

Nan Goldin, Jimmy Paulette & Misty in a Taxi, NYC, photograph, 1991

We did a list a while back all about cars and particularly the way muscle cars have worked their way into the rock and roll male consciousness. Taxis are cars too, but they’re of a very different sort. They don’t belong to us, they aren’t expressions of our identity. We feel disconnected when we’re in a cab, out of place, lost, isolated, depressed. We pay for the privilege to feel all these things. And they stink. “My reason for living isn’t here inside this car,” Daryl Hall sings plaintively in “Cab Driver.” In fact, in the musical world nothing good ever happens where a taxi’s concerned. While Chuck Berry has no trouble running down Maybelline in his “V-8 Ford,” he has much less success chasing Nadine in cabs and city buses.  It's the “Big Yellow Taxi” that takes away Joni Mitchell’s “Old Man.” Then there’s the cab song of all cab songs, Harry Chapin’s rainy night tale of lost love and a life un-lived. 

Of course, Prince being Prince manages to get lucky with his “Lady Cab Driver,” but only in the most impersonal hookup you’ll ever encounter: “Lady I’m so lonely,” the speaker tells her, “Drive this demon out of me.” 

Should we expect a round of Uber and Lyft tunes eventually? “ooooh...Trying hard to feel homey and personal but it’s not…” or “stroke me with your rating...ah ah ah...”