Now 34, a Sea Shanty CD and the Gospel According to the Boot: The Real Soundtrack of British Motoring

For years we've accepted a lie. 'Dad rock,' they say, and conjure up a man in cargo shorts air-drumming to Oasis while his children beg for mercy. But I've spent the last month asking friends, family and several strangers at petrol stations what music actually lives in their cars, and I can report the following: nobody has listened to Definitely Maybe since approximately 2009. The truth is stranger, sadder and considerably more shanty-based.

The real British car canon doesn't live in the glovebox of the imagination. It lives in the boot, in a plastic sleeve welded to the spare wheel well, in a footwell archaeology layer that dates the vehicle more accurately than the logbook. And it is time we ranked it.

Tier One: The Foundational Texts

Now 34. Not a specific track — the object. Now 34 is the Rosetta Stone of the British family car. It contains 'Fill My Little World' by The Feeling, which is scientifically proven to make a motorway junction feel like the finale of a film about a dog. Every household owned exactly one Now album and it was never the current one. Now 34 appears to have been issued to every vehicle in the country at manufacture, like a spare wheel.

The Chris de Burgh Greatest Hits. Yes. THE Chris de Burgh. 'The Lady in Red' is, whether you like it or not, the most-played song in the history of British family motoring, and it's not close. My own father defended this CD with the fervour of a man defending his homeland. 'He's a proper songwriter,' he said, once, at 70mph, unprompted, to nobody.

Tier Two: The Burned Mystery Discs

Every British car contains at least one unlabelled CD-R, written in biro or, more hauntingly, not labelled at all. These are the texts most likely to be studied by future historians. Findings from my survey:

• One disc containing, in its entirety, sea shanties. Nineteen tracks. No explanation. The owner (my uncle) claims no memory of making it. 'What Shall We Do with the Drunken Sailor' came on during a school run and three children were changed forever.
• A disc labelled simply 'SUMMER' which contains one song, 'In the Summertime' by Mungo Jerry, followed by 71 minutes of silence.
• A disc that is clearly a recording of someone's mate's band from 2004, of which there is exactly one good track, and every passenger who has ever sat in that car knows which one it is.

Tier Three: The Cassette Relics

For the older vehicles — the Volvo estates, the base-spec Fords — we enter cassette territory, and here the canon gets theological:

• A hits compilation from a petrol station, possibly Esso, possibly Texaco, the artist list a fever dream of easy listening.
• One tape that is definitely a recording off the radio where the DJ talks over the intro of every song and someone's mum can be heard saying 'just leave it recording, I'm on the phone.'
• A blank tape, rewound, labelled, containing nothing. Why was it labelled? Nobody knows. It says 'GOOD STUFF.'

The Reader Submissions (You're All Unwell)

I asked for boot finds and, Frank Popp readers, you delivered:

• 'A Now 2002 where disc one is missing and disc two is fused to its case.' — from a Ford Ka in Norwich
• 'The Shrek soundtrack. Just the Shrek soundtrack. For eleven years.'
• 'My grandad's car has a CD of nothing but Pan Pipe Moods and a single, unopened Curly Wurly. I have never questioned it and I never will.'
• 'An album called Driving Anthems that contains no anthems and one track of engine sounds, sold to him in 1998 by a man in a lay-by.'

The Verdict

So retire 'dad rock' to the great boot of history. The true soundtrack of British motoring is a Now album two years out of date, a man singing about a lady in a red dress, and nineteen sea shanties no one can explain. Put the aux down. Open the boot. The truth is in there, fused to a case, waiting.

Now 34 for Prime Minister. I will not be taking questions.