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Hey Siri play Take Offs and Landings by Rilo Kiley
Dirt contributors and friends on the best songs to press play on as the wheels lift off.
Airplanes; glamorous in theory and rarely in practice; technologically remarkable—bafflingly so, for me at least—but totally mundane once you’re in them; ecstatic to some, terrifying to others. “The amazing thing about the airport is you can cry as much as you want and no one thinks its weird” — Rayne Fisher-Quann. “the moment when a plane stops being in contact with the tarmac, that’s a body” — me. To fly is both to triumph over our earthbound mortal coil and to be suspended in a tin can tens of thousands of feet in the air.
To paraphrase a conversation I had with PAPER Arts editor-at-large Harry Tafoya, flying is the open and closed parenthesis around a bubble of experience. Travel is almost always emotionally fraught; Mad Men knew this, as did James Baldwin. So when the tears hit—even if that’s just something that happens to people who change altitude more than four times a day—we turn to music, as an amplifier or as a palliative.
I think (hope) I speak for everyone in this list when I say: as of publishing, we’re doing okay. But in the blurbs below, you will find these writers and friends of the Dirtyverse at their lowest, their most laid-bare, their straight-up terrified because, see above: tin can. You’ll also have a Spotify playlist’s worth of the songs that got us through it. Just don’t forget to download them in advance. Safe flying. —Walden
Once I just listened to this song on repeat for the entire flight. It's the 12" version for me but Axel Boman made an “In the Air” remix, even. Heavenly. Internationally touring DJs really have a profound understanding of air travel.
Internationally touring DJs really have a profound understanding of air travel.
Airplane takeoff songs are something I take very seriously, and am often disappointed by how hard they are to time given how long flights are waiting on the runway for signal clearance. I will constantly go back and play the first half of a song over and over again because I felt like we were about to take off but was wrong and didn't want to miss the correct part of the song that has to be playing as we leave the ground. Anyway the correct part of the song in question is roughly two minutes and forty five seconds into 'Run Into Flowers; by M83. Then listen to the rest of the album in order as you ascend into the clouds. Just trust me on this.
Nothing says I am finally airborne and ready to contemplate like Rihanna's "Higher"
Beach House's "Levitation" is an ethereal rumination on ascension. The song lifts, as the name suggests, pulling you into a lofty dreamscape as your plane takes off. It can be said that most Beach House songs do this, existing in an intangible haze that is reminiscent of the clouds. Yet "Levitation" has the idea of transportation woven into it. It's built with the same gauze as Howl's Moving Castle, in the sky and beyond whatever you left on Earth. "There's a place I want to take you," ushers the lead singer Victoria Legrand, and, with her, you drift to your next destination. Or, at least until the snack cart rolls around.
“Forget About Life,” Alvvays
I was crying large crocodile tears the last time I was sitting on a plane, because that was the morning that I said goodbye to a British man who lived in London. We’d just had a spontaneous, week-long summer fling after we had met at speed dating in Ridgewood. If I sound dramatic, it is because I am a Libra. It made me go insane, because there I was sitting in 45E and listening to “Forget About Life” by Alvvays on repeat and thinking about the irony of me attending my cousin’s wedding in Indonesia when the closest thing I had to romantic intimacy a) did not even live on the same continent as me and b) was not aware of my existence eight days earlier. Anyway, just kidding, my plane take-off song is “Breakaway” by Kelly Clarkson.
For liftoff: Steve Reich's Music for 18 Musicians (“Pulses”) to heighten the nervous, anticipatory wonder of departing to a new destination. Once you're in the air: Cole Pulice's “If I Don't See You in the Future, I'll See You in the Pasture.” And as you're power walking to baggage claim, about to greet a new city: Solange's “Losing You” if you're feeling excited, Lomelda's “Hannah Sun” if you're feeling pensive.
No Aloha, by the Breeders
"Here Come The Warm Jets" by Brian Eno
My writing professor in college showed my class a podcast where the writer Mark Fisher described one of Brian Eno's albums as one that evokes spaces of detachment, and I can't think of a better way to describe his music. I've always loved the anticipation and buildup of a long introduction in any song, the waiting period of getting to the other side of it. The introduction of "Here Come The Warm Jets" is endless but it's also very satisfying. The dissonant piano chords that are almost too faint to notice, vocals only coming in more than halfway through the song leave you on edge, and the drums emerging so slowly and softly offbeat too. It all comes together so well and, when timed correctly, is perfect for takeoff. I always feel on the cusp of something when I listen to "Here Come The Warm Jets," as though in a cyclical state of suspense and excitement, much like how I feel when I fly.
Moving from one time zone to another is perhaps the ultimate manifestation of this departure and return to reality.
The last time I flew was a long international flight to Paris. My flight had been delayed one day and I was exhausted and frustrated by the time I was losing from staying where I was. By the time I got on the plane, all I wanted to do was detach. I remember listening to "Here Come The Warm Jets" on a loop while the plane taxied up through the plane taking off both ways. In an attempt to not sound like a cliche, I believe Eno is heard best in liminal spaces, so the intensity of "Here Come The Warm Jets" mixed with Eno's comforting, familiar ambiance always hits. I wrote a piece during this time about some encounters with art, but there was a whole section about how listening to Eno makes me feel suspended in time. Moving from one time zone to another is perhaps the ultimate manifestation of this departure and return to reality. While writing this just now, I found notes from that piece. One of the random, fragmented sentences I wrote on the flight home from Paris perhaps says it best: "Best song to listen to while the plane takes off: 'Here Come The Warm Jets' by Brian Eno."
Ladies and gentlemen we are floating in space by Spiritualized
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My perfect wheels-up song is "California" by Phantom Planet aka the theme song from The OC. It's one of my favorite songs in general—both anthemic and nostalgic—but it hits particularly hard when you close your eyes and lift off.
When I'm flying, I always make a Spotify playlist while my phone is on airplane mode because I enjoy when we return to solid ground and cellular data and my playlist disappears into digital nothingness. I feel like those monks who destroy their meticulously crafted sand mandalas. The first song on these playlists is usually The Next Time Might Be Your Time by “Blue” Gene Tyranny because I love the way it slowly builds up to this soaring instrumental interlude then quickly devolves into a turbulent sax solo. Perfect for liftoff. The lyrics make me tear up on a plane like a mediocre in-flight movie.
I feel like those monks who destroy their meticulously crafted sand mandalas.
So it depends… if we’re going somewhere warm I embrace my inner child and listen to Holiday From Real by Jacks Mannequin lmao
Otherwise it’s electrolite by REM
Oh or brothers on a hotel bed by death cab! Such a good plane song
Otis by The Durutti Column. Relaxing but not quite ambient, no real lyrics (only fragments). Perfect for a flight without Wi-Fi; the best flights are blissful, weightless purgatory and this song ferries you there. By the time it ends you're in the air and starting your book.
In 2019 before the world became globalized in a grim storm of coughing fits and respirators, I entered LGA to go board a flight back for Thanksgiving. I turned to my iPhone and locked in. Björk and Arca’s “Arisen My Senses.” A celestial song by the dogmatic empress of cosmic love and healing. “Utopia’ is a heavenly rupture, a reverie of safety and crashes while the plane’s wings open wind into the blue skies, awakening touch taste smell fear sound and sight. A mixtape of mothers, saints, and bird calls all waiting around us in the airport. Björk, like a character in a Sigrid Nunez novel, is open to talking to the woman next to her. Both fear and hope are contagious. So is freedom. Like Ursula K Le Guin’s “The Day Before the Revolution,” Björk’s album ushers in hope as the apocalypse cascades.
See also her conversation with Robin Wall Kimmerer. Both help me on a flight. Or Krista Tippett with Mary Oliver.
“Glamorous” by Fergie for that sweet sweet ‘middle seat in the last row of economy on a United flight out of Newark’ experience!
“Glamorous” by Fergie for that sweet sweet ‘middle seat in the last row of economy on a United flight out of Newark’ experience!
Last month, I went to Italy with my family, and our flight to Venice was delayed. We sat on the tarmac for three hours, and I listened to “Joker Lips” at least 20 times. It came out the week before. I recognized it from when I saw MJ Lenderman back in June. Like Lenderman, I was also struggling to keep it together. Pangs of hunger ripped through my stomach; I hoped for the hours to pass a little faster. “Only half of what I said was a joke,” I thought to myself when I told my mom that if we had to wait any longer, I’d do something that would put me on the no-fly list.
I remember leaving Mexico City while in college and the woman next to me was praying heavily and I was hungover and scared that the plane was going to crash and that I would die. "This is the end," I thought. I needed something — and something not overly chill like Brian Eno, something you can rock out a little too. I didn't have it then, but here it is now:
Wouldn't You Know - Royal Headache
You Will Not Take My Heart Alive - Joanna Newsom
I was going to be an asshole and pick the song that follows this one ("A Pin-Light Bent" about a devastating plane crash), but my gay, earnest streak ultimately won out. Before take-off, I usually experience a weird feeling of finality, that something more than my trip has come to an end. But for the past few times I've visited home - to play with my puppy, to meet old friends, to enjoy my 92-year-old grandmother's company - I've left understanding that what I've lost is time itself. My puppy is getting bigger, my friends are getting engaged, my grandmother has gotten older. When we finally achieve lift-off, this emotion peaks in tears and then settles into hard acceptance. Looking back is bittersweet but there are still many miles left ahead.
In this song Joanna Newsom is staring out the window and watching as the landscape falls away from her. The world is in motion and it's steadily slipping beyond her grasp. She writes beautifully and mournfully about this view from above, all of the sights that she takes in and the patterns they form as they recede into the distance: "Now the towns and forests, highways and plains/Fall back in circles like an emptying drain/And I won't come round this way again/Where the lonely wind abides." As she builds up to that final word, her voice climaxes into an operatic warble and her harp arpeggiates with it, as though in climbing above the clouds, she were also levitating out of her body. But then the music calms and so does she, and she repeats the title over and over until the listener understands that as long as she’s living she’ll never give up on loving. It’s a mantra I’ve found that helps with overcoming the emotional turbulence of riding in an airplane, that a heart’s resolve can rise far above the gravity of loss.
A heart’s resolve can rise far above the gravity of loss.
“Snowchild” - The Weekend. (Unrelated: you’re more likely to have LAX demonstrably harm a long-distance relationship in your life than experience a shark attack. I made that up but it sounds true!)
"let go" - frou frou
Flying Saucer Attack - Feedback Song
This song embodies the feeling of ascending to the heavens and staying in orbit.
The Bouncing Souls’ “Lamar Vannoy.” It’s hard not to picture yourself moving towards something while listening to it. I think Larry Clark and Ed Lachman must agree with me on this, as the best part of their incredibly divisive film “Ken Park” is the titular character skateboarding to it.
For me this question is actually about which song I’ve desperately downloaded in the minutes before takeoff to listen to on repeat for the entirety of the hour and a half long flight between O’Hare and LaGuardia, and the answer is that you need something that’s not only physically satisfying while you’re hurtling into the stratosphere in a Boeing that may or may not have its doors firmly bolted on, but also hypnotic enough to deliver an even deeper liminal space sensory deprivation experience than rawdogging a flight (aka “daydreaming” and pure amateur hour compared to liminal submersion), and the song is either Nicki Minaj, Four Door Aventador, or Led Zeppelin, Fool in the Rain.
I’m a moody traveler, and I recall having a special experience listening to a.s.o.’s smoky “Love In the Darkness” last year while my plane was in taxi. If you can imagine what Mazzy Star would sound like performing at an after hours strip club in Berlin… while you’re on ketamine—this is what that song sounds like to me. As the song crescendoed into the final chorus, the plane began to take flight, and I felt like I was being shot into heaven as Alia Seror-O’Neill lovingly cooed over the cruising cowboy groove and twinkling synthline. It’s a song that takes you from saudade to pure bliss in a little over four minutes, if you’re into that kind of thing.
It’s a song that takes you from saudade to pure bliss in a little over four minutes, if you’re into that kind of thing.
Until I was 27, I was deathly afraid of flying, removed from one plane, kicked out of the airport twice by the feds, and blacking out on sedatives before my impending honeymoon with my first husband to ruin the trip and instead stay home, forced to swap Europe for Fire Island, a sad but necessary exchange for an aviophobe. Our marriage lasted six months, if you can believe it. But, you grow up, and suddenly, over the pandemic, when I flew to the three trauma rehabs I was kicked out of, I meditated and repeated the same song until I was airborne: Lana del Rey's "Chemtrails Over the Country Club." It's never too late, baby, so don't give up. The phobia disappeared and I've flown many times since, always with this album.
The perfect take-off song is 'Volare' (of Lizzie McGuire Movie fame). I'm never where I want to be when I'm at the airport, but I'm always on my way there. You need a song that captures that sense of whimsy and optimism. And you need a song that hits peak musicality around 15-20 seconds in to have the best experience when the wheels leave the ground. Imagine hearing the musical stylings of Vitamin C hit the lines, 'Let's fly way up to the clouds, away from the maddening crowds,' right as the plane takes off. You're not in your window seat anymore. Spiritually, you're sitting on a moped, hugging a gorgeous Italian pop star, darting through the streets of Rome. And I think that's beautiful.
Where are we going? Who are we going to see? I suppose being up there is the closest we get to the people who aren’t with us anymore…
Up up and away - Rich Homie Quan and Young Thug feat. Birdman
I suppose being up there is the closest we get to the people who aren’t with us anymore…
Duster, “Gold Dust”
I wasn’t always anxious on planes but I am now, immensely. I suppose it runs in my family: My parents love to tell a story about this one family vacation when, just as the plane started going down the runway and the general chit-chat quieted, our fellow passengers suddenly heard nothing but a child—my sweet older sister, probably seven years old at the time—sobbing and repeating, at the top of her lungs, Hail Mary, full of grace… (Nightmare fuel!)
So your mileage may vary, but for personal reasons, I need a takeoff song that gently unmoors me from my own racing thoughts. For this I usually turn to Duster’s “Gold Dust.” I’ve listened to this wordless slowcore track so often since I first heard it a dozen years ago that the contours of its perfect little instrumental melody are now etched into the deepest corners of my brain. Its tempo isn’t so languid that my mind will start to wander, but it’s not fast enough to get my adrenaline pumping, either. Plus something about the song’s hazy, lo-fi ambience means I can play it at top volume without feeling absolutely pummeled. It clocks in at just under two minutes, so I listen on a loop, waiting for my heartrate to come back down and feeling like I could truly die inside its perfect guitar tone.
Wharf Rat by the Grateful Dead. I like the version from 77 on Dick's Picks Vol 3. "I'll get up and fly away..."
La femme d'argent by Air. No further comment, thank you ☺️.
Perfectly timed pre-security edible is hitting: Blinkmoth (July Mix) by James K...song of the year by one of the only artists who I could listen to forever (aside from The Radio Dept & Organ Tapes)
Middle seat on the way to your Midwestern hometown to listen to your family argue at Thanksgiving: The Scope of All This Rebuilding by The Hotelier...might as well start regressing early lol
Got a free upgrade to one of the patrician classes and had a glass of Syrah in the lounge before boarding: The Aperture by Harold Budd & Hector Zazou...very silky n sultry
Love a plane takeoff. Being a rare occasion for me, I romanticise the fuck out of them - one of the few feelings of movement that makes you untouchable outside of speedboat bumps or a supercar burnout, which are just impractical. For a moment, you forget the doomed word “Ryanair” on the side of the plane, cursing you to a life of no legroom.
One of the few feelings of movement that makes you untouchable outside of speedboat bumps or a supercar burnout, which are just impractical.
With doubled-up jet fury next to you and the crinkle of the tissue-stuffed headrest behind you, you look out to the sun stinging your eyes - Roddy Ricch’s face is superimposed there like a Teletubbies baby.
When he comes in on his and Mustard’s song “Ballin’”, it’s like he performed it as the landing gear was retracting. Mustard’s West Coast flavour nails that succession of punch and weightlessness that encapsulates a good plane takeoff tune, and Ricch rides it with a glee that shines almost as brightly as Young Thug on Jamie xx’s “I Know There’s Gonna Be (Good Times)”. There’s inevitably so much stress either side of a flight, so it’s nice to have a tune that sonically, lyrically meets the moment free of worry.
Sigur Rós - "Untitled #6 (E-Bow)"
Over a decade ago, this came on shuffle when my flight took off and it numbed me. Sigur Rós are always cinematic, duh, but this specific song is like plunging into arctic water: your body freezes up, your breath hitches, and everything slows. I love how flying momentarily suspends time and lets you disconnect from the world, at least as far as phones go. This song, and most of the album ( ), lets you commit to that.
Groovejet (Spilled fr Sophie Ellis Bextor)
I like to fly to Groovejet. Call me crazy, but when I take off in my commercial jet, I like to hear a jet taking off, and if I can hear two taking off, it’s double the pleasure. And it just so happens this song begins with a jet! The driving house beat comes next, which provides a solid stability to any turbulence we may encounter on our climb to the high sky lanes, the one-bar baseline and disco sample has a familiarity that never wavers, also providing some emotional insurance to our inevitable uncertainty from cruising the altitudes only the birds were meant to. Now comes Sophie, the slightly flanged verse vocals reminiscent of our own aerial sound modulations, as we rip through the clouds and soar over the now miniaturised lands below, a gentle but unsettling human tone provides that comfort with a side order of uneasiness. Then the chorus kicks in, with its multipart vocal and first chord change, we feel as though we are really GOING somewhere in this big old lump of floating metal! Why DOES it feel so good (to fly)? Then comes the pay off we’ve been waiting for, the alternate bridge disco slash chord, a truly heartwarming feeling that excites us and makes us feel proud to fly, comfortable to fly, satisfied to be flying. The track beautifully continues in this wonderful fashion for another couple of minutes, but when it’s all over we can just rely on the repeat setting and groovejet to our destination infinitely, as I’m sure the original Groovejet occupants would have similarly approved of.
Bonus listening: Don’t Miss That Flight/Airplane Song by DJ Sabrina The Teenage DJ. Never will you find yourself alone at the terminal with your only flight out having left you behind, as the trumpets swell and the house beat drives on, you’ll take to the skies with a smile and a tear, heck, maybe you’ll even smile at a passenger stranger and be grateful to be in this timeline with them, cruising the skies and listening to Airplane Song.
I get a lot of flight anxiety, and there's something comforting and transcendent about the latter half of Ethel Cain's "Sun Bleached Flies." If it's meant to be, it'll be, I guess!
Airports are places to watch people. When I get on an airplane, I get sad because I can't watch anyone anymore. This is a travesty. The worst thing to happen to an airport is a plane. There isn't anywhere to look but forward. There isn't anywhere to go but where you're going. All the possibilities die. The person next to you is also watching you, which fucking sucks, because watching is only cool when you're the one doing it. I am rambling. I am sorry. I enjoy the song "I Saw You" by James Pants because it's about inventing lives for the people you watch. Takeoffs limit what there is to see. (The sky is very boring. The $40 book you picked up in the airport is even more boring.) They don’t limit what there is to imagine.
The worst thing to happen to an airport is a plane. There isn't anywhere to look but forward.
"At the Bottom of Everything" by Bright Eyes. It also serves the dual purpose of being my replacement for the "happy birthday" song.
This is really a song about hope, right? And yet nothing too saccharine, because your flight’s not going to be that good. And nothing about actually being on a plane — ugh. And, depending on where you’re going, only some songs about your destination are OK, and even that’s pushing it.
For all the reasons listed above, I will be selecting the Pretenders’ “Brass in Pocket.” Thank you very much.
there are three perfect songs for the first and last 10min of a plane trip. "in undertow" and "chancer" are pretty dense, guitar wise – while still being thrilling and directional and exciting – so any actual noise from the plane taking off blends in. "in undertow" is about escaping something, "chancer" is hopeful and romantic, and "kitty girl," the grand finale, is pure blue skies optimism, you'll be a brand new bitch when you land, etc etc. you have to listen to the playlist during the ascent for the full experience.
Old Friends - Pinegrove
This came out right when I moved to New York from California for one semester in high school. I remember listening to this song on my takeoff and feeling like my childhood was closing forever . . . quite dramatic! Anyways, I still listen to this on the plane to trigger that coming-of-age-film-feeling, which fits quite nicely with travel!
This summer I've been listening to "New Groove" by Tomu DJ feat. YoungLove Erix when my flights takeoff -- the soothing rhythms and Erix's lyrical meanderings always leave me feeling pleasantly sedate. And when my flights land, a much more critical listening choice, I've been playing "Goon Muzik (We Run N.Y.)" by Max B feat. French Montana & Dame Grease; I've been a big fan of "Englishman In New York" by Sting since middle school, and this flip gets me pumped to hit the pavement and go. Free Max B.
A little biased as the proud owner of a “Cactus Tree” tattoo, but Joni Mitchell has an entire sub-oeuvre dedicated to exactly this. For brevity though, I'll cap it at three: "Urge for Going," (it’s the b-side of “You Turn Me On, I’m a Radio”), "This Flight Tonight" from Blue, and "Amelia" from Hejira.
Gillian Flynn book tape 🛫