Road Trip 2

Before you gas up for that next big tour — even if it's just a weekend getaway — don't forget to give your music mix a tune-up with our high-revvin', highway-rockin' Road Trip Essentials. Country superstars Rascal Flatts lay the rubber to the road with a hard-drivin' cover of Tom Cochrane's "Life Is a Highway," first featured on the soundtrack to Cars. Canadian R&B teen heartthrob Justin Bieber gets a turbo boost from Ludacris' tongue-twisting rat-a-tat rap in "Baby," the lead track from his sophomore release, My World 2.0. And Lady GaGa shifts into high gear with four on the floor — the dance floor, that is — when she teams up with soul diva Beyoncé in the supercharged, synth-slathered "Telephone." In Next Steps, we'll hang with the Queen of the Tweens, hear from the Queen of the Tabloids, and rev it up with the Boss.

What do these three artists in our Next Steps have in common with one another? Practically nothing, really, except for the need for speed. We'll kick it off with the tween heavyweight champ of stage, screen, and radio, Miley Cyrus, who Auto-Tunes her way to pop perfection in "Party In the U.S.A." Former titleholder Britney Spears gets all up in the grill of a would-be Casanova in the beat-heavy beat-down of "Womanizer." And from Max Weinberg's opening drum roll to Clarence Clemons' closing sax wail, Bruce Springsteen's "Born to Run" defines America's eight-cylinder love affair with the open road. In Deep Cuts, we'll meet an American Idol, party down with some spandex-clad superstars, and end up right back where we started . . . sort of.

As our road trip winds deeper into Deep Cuts, we're gonna move from the coiffed and teased to the down-home and chicken fried. Former American Idol winner Kelly Clarkson slides into a slinky, funky groove in "Miss Independent," purring, growling, and finally wailing like a Ferrari 458 Italia straining at a stoplight. With a heartbeat kick drum and a megawatt barrage of fuzzed-out guitar, Poison swings a high-octane sonic sledgehammer into the heavy-metal heart of "Nothin' But a Good Time." And the Zac Brown Band glides us back to where we started — with a little bit country, a little bit rock 'n' roll — with their laid-back, Jimmy Buffett-y, beach-and-beer buzz of "Toes."

Somewhere in the back of your mind, there's a fun-craving maniac screaming, "Let's do it! Go! Go! Go!" Yep, it's time to hit the road, Jack (or Jill), get out of Dodge, pack up your worries, and fling 'em out the car window at 90 miles per hour. But before you load up the coupe for a road trip to Destination Unknown, you gotta make sure you've packed the perfect playlist — one that won't run out of gas and leave you stranded in AM Radio Land somewhere out on the Interstate. And that's where we come in: from Beyoncé to the B-52's, from Rascal Flatts to Linkin Park, our Road Trip Essentials may not do much to improve your mpg, but we guarantee it'll deliver a massive boost to your bpm.