Fear of Flying: The Most Inappropriate Songs for In-Flight Radio

Now, normally, I love “Sleepwalk”—it’s one of the most wistful, nostalgic, emotive pieces of music I’ve ever heard. It sounds like it was recorded at 4 a.m. by people who were literally sleepwalking. And when you hear it, you can almost feel your vision clouded by a haze of cigarette smoke and whiskey. 

But wait a minute—we’re on an airplane here, and anyone who’s ever seen Ritchie Valens biopic La Bamba knows that “Sleepwalk” is now permanently associated with the plane crash that killed Valens, Holly and the Big Bopper. Yep, the infamous “Day the Music Died.” So as I’m sitting there listening to this song I start thinking about that final heartbreaking flashback sequence in La Bamba, when Ritchie’s brother, Bob, hears about the plane crash over the radio, and screams in anguish, “RITCHIE!!!” 

So what I’m trying to say here is that “Sleepwalk” is not really an appropriate song for in-flight radio. Here are some others that also fall into that unfortunate category...

Sticking with our initial theme, McLean’s ’70s folk-rock anthem chronicles “The Day The Music Died.” So let's leave that off the in-flight radio playlist, and for good measure, let’s also skip anything by Budy Holly, Ritchie Valens or The Big Bopper. 

This unequivocally bleak tune from Radiohead masterwork Ok Computer might just be eerie enough to give airline passengers the creeps even without the lyrics. But add that chorus hook—"Pull me out of the air crash / Pull me out of the lake"—and it puts this tune over the top.

In an unbelievably bizarre turn of events, the Ryan Adams album this song appears on, Gold, was scheduled to come out Sept. 11, 2001. The lyrics from “Firecracker,” in hindsight, become prophetic: “So when does the plane go down? / 'Cause I'm gonna ride it 'til it hits the ground / Then go out with a fight.” Also strange: The album features an upside-down American flag on the cover, and opens with the Adams tune “New York, New York,” a bittersweet tribute to the title city.

5. Andrew Bird - "Fiery Crash" 

6. Bright Eyes - “At the Bottom of Everything” 

This tune—the lead track from 2005’s I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning—opens with the following monologue: “So there was this woman and she was on an airplane, and she's flying to meet her fiancé, sailing high above the largest ocean on planet earth, and she was seated next to this man who, you know, she had tried to start conversations and really the only thing she heard him say was to order his bloody mary, and she's sitting there and she's reading this really arduous magazine article about a third-world country that she couldn't even pronounce the name of, and she's feeling very bored and very despondent, and then, suddenly, there's this huge mechanical failure and one of the engines gave out and they started just falling, 30,000 feet and the pilot's on the microphone and he's saying, ‘I'm sorry, I'm sorry, Oh My God, I'm Sorry,’ and apologizing and she looks at the man and she says, ‘Where are we going?’ and he looks at her and he says, ‘We're going to a party—it's a birthday party. It's your birthday party, happy birthday, darling. We love you very, very, very, very, very, very, very much.’ And then, uh, he starts humming this little tune and it kind of goes like this, it's kinda: one, two, one, two, three, four…” 

7. Rilo Kiley - “Plane Crash in C” 

This DBT double album is a modern Southern-rock classic with a storyline loosely woven around the 1977 plane crash that killed Lynyrd Skynyrd band members Ronnie Van Zant, Steve Gaines, and Cassie Gaines, as well as assistant road manager Dean Kilpatrick, pilot Walter McCreary and co-pilot William Gray. Better go ahead and leave anything from the album Street Survivors off of airline playlists, too, since the crash occurred just three days after the album’s release, and the cover featured a photo with the band engulfed in flames. 

The first song's inclusion is self-explanatory. The second? Who wants a pilot who’s learning to fly? This is a commercial flight with hundreds of passengers for God’s sake. And the fact that the guy who's learning to fly “ain’t got wings” and that he thinks “coming down is the hardest thing?” Not very reassuring. 

Don’t let the conspiracy theorists fool you. Sadly, aviation pioneer Amelia Earhart never finished her flight around the globe in 1937. And who wants to be reminded of that while sipping an icy cup of Coca-Cola and rationing your 10 peanut halves in coach? 

This panty-dropping anthem takes on a whole new vibe at 35,000 feet. 

13. Todd Snider - "D.B. Cooper" 

The ballad of a mysterious real-life airline hijacker, this song is certainly not in-flight material. If it comes on, best take off your headphones and start skimming the SkyMall—unless you’re a folk singer, in which case, you can’t really fool with no SkyMall.

Why this innocent song, you ask? Because the guy is leaving on a jet plane—and he doesn’t know when he’ll be back again. Probably because he’s dead. Or on that weird island with the polar bears.

I'm pretty sure that—if there's a flight-attendant's union—it has banned this song from in-flight radio.