Cars and music jam together often, but it's not just Benzes, Cadillacs, and Bentleys getting name-dropped in tunes -- the all-electric Tesla is getting mentioned more and more by rappers, country singers, pop stars, and other musicians around the world.
Lyric licensing company LyricFind broke down how different car brands stack up in the songs we listen to -- Mercedes piled up nearly 5,000 song mentions, while American brands like Chevy ("Drove my Chevy to the levy...") had more than 1,860 song mentions. Tesla is one of the newer car brands out there, with its first car, the Roadster, arriving in 2008. Since then with the Model S, X, and now 3, it's become enough of a pop icon to be mentioned in 142 songs.
After going through all the songs, LyricFind found lyrical plays on Tesla's electric battery ("Yes sir, never getting gassed like a Tesla") and its semi-autonomous driving system, Autopilot. Some songs even poke fun at Tesla CEO Elon Musk, like Lil Baby's, "Leaked," with the line, "I took a Tesla and landed on Mars." One song by German rapper Ufo361 is straight-up called "Tesla." Germany has sold about 10,000 Tesla vehicles since 2013.
A few artists include the name "Tesla" in many of their works, like Jaden Smith with six songs and 2 Chainz with five. In one 2 Chainz song the lyrics mention behavior you're notsupposed to do in a Tesla despite promises of self-driving: "I just drove the Tesla with both eyes closed."
For some Tesla-inspired listening, we created a playlist of every Tesla-mentioned song available on Spotify. All but 11 of the 118 songs are explicit, so listen with that in mind. Some of the songs are in Spanish, German, or other languages.
To see how popular your car brand is on the music scene (sorry Acura owners, you only have 20 songs), here's a full list:
Credit: lyricfindHow soon until we're singing, "Drove my Tesla to the Supercharger."
