Summer of ‘69

The nostalgic Bryan Adams track Summer of ‘69 is the top driving song among Canadians who sing in their cars, according to a poll released Tuesday.

The Canadian tune emerged victorious over such rock classics Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody and Steppenwolf’s Born to be Wild in a poll conducted by Decima Research.

The poll asked 1,000 adult Canadians across the country to choose their favourite driving song out of a list of seven tunes chosen by a panel of music journalists.

The song placed first among both English- and French-speaking Canadians, and both men and women, Decima said Tuesday.

“There are loads of great car songs, but to be a driving classic, the song needs to stand the test of time,” said Aaron Brophy, managing editor of Chart Magazine.

“The universal quality of Canada’s top driving songs is the feeling you get when you’re alone in the car and one of them comes on — you can’t help but get swept up in the moment.”

Adams, the raspy-voiced pop-rocker who was inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame in April, released Summer of ‘69 on his 1984 album Reckless.

According to the Canadian Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, Reckless made Adams the first Canadian artist to sell a million copies of an album.

The poll ranked the Canada’s seven favourite driving songs in the following order:

1. Summer of ‘69, Bryan Adams
2. Bohemian Rhapsody, Queen
3. Born to be Wild, Steppenwolf
4. It’s Only Rock and Roll, The Rolling Stones
5. Drive My Car, The Beatles
6. Free Falling, Tom Petty
7. Radar Love, Golden Earring

The poll also reported that 66 per cent of the respondents sing in the car and, of those, 73 per cent are women.

More than half of the respondents said they sing along to the radio and a similar number reported having been “caught” by other drivers while belting out a tune.

Decima conducted the poll via telephone over one week in mid-July and the results are considered accurate within 3.1 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.