Songs about Bicycles
Twelve songs about the bicycle — the most songable machine ever built. Queen counting fat-bottomed girls, Katie Melua counting nine million in Beijing, Syd Barrett lending you his (you can borrow it if you like), and Kraftwerk turning the whole peloton into sequencers. Plus two of our own that couldn’t stay off the road.
Two Wheels, No Motor
It’s a surprisingly deep bench. Nazareth covering Tomorrow’s psychedelic “My White Bicycle,” the Mixtures pedalling in Mungo Jerry’s slipstream, Vivian Stanshall keeping his trouser-clips on with Bonzo-Dog whimsy, Shonen Knife insisting — correctly — that cycling is fun. It runs from 1967 whimsy to Düsseldorf’s electronic Tour de France, the one song here that treats the bicycle as pure machine.
And two from the roster join the ride: the Moss Twins’ “Wheel of Teal,” late-period psychedelic doo-wop that spins exactly the colour it names, and Itzik Kagan’s “Makhtesh” — a pilgrimage by bicycle into an Israeli erosion crater, the reverb coming off iron walls. Every wheel gets its song.
Play it uphill.
Pairs well with a puncture repair kit, a tailwind you don’t deserve, and trouser-clips you refuse to wear.
