In 1979, Sniff ‘n’ the Tears had their first and only hit song with “Driver’s Seat.” The classic rock/new wave song, from the band’s 1978 album Fickle Heart, peaked at No. 15 on the Billboard Hot 100. “Driver’s Seat” was popular enough to fuel a two-and-a-half-month tour for Sniff ‘n’ the Tears in the United States, per the British band’s official website.
Rolling Stone ranked “Driver’s Seat” as one of the 50 best road trip songs of all time, on a list that included driving classics by Jimi Hendrix, AC/DC, and Tom Petty. The outlet noted the song featured “an acoustic guitar rhythm that never quit, even as it swerved around a Moog solo and the fragmented alienation of the lyrics.”
The song isn’t actually about driving
Sniff ‘n’ the Tears founding member Paul Roberts once revealed he started writing “Driver’s Seat” in the middle of the night when a noisy refrigerator kept him awake.
In an interview with Rock History Music, Roberts said he went for a walk at 2 a.m. and heard a riff in his head. He went home to work on the chords and later realized it was somebody else’s riff. “The O’Jays or somebody like that,” he said. “It was kind of a dance floor riff. So I just stayed with the rhythm guitar part and built the song on that.”
As for the lyrics, Roberts told Interviewing the Legends the song is not about driving a car. “It’s not about driving, no,” he said of the often-misunderstood theme. “It just means take charge of your own life, you know, get your act together, really.”
“The driver’s seat, I mean, I think it just means not literally getting into a car but just taking control of your own destiny, that’s all,“ he said during a 2024 appearance on the Professor of Rock podcast. “Don’t let other people, you know, decide your life. You decide your own life.”
Roberts elaborated in an interview with Vintage Rock. “Lyrically, the song is about picking yourself up after a breakup,” he said. “Musically, it started as a riff; behind the riff was a revolving chord sequence. I abandoned the riff when I realized it was a bit similar to something else, but the acoustic pattern was unusual and led to a certain propulsive tension that suited the fragmented state of mind implied by the words.”
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Surprise success
Roberts also touched on the song’s success in the United States and other countries.
“I think everyone was surprised,” the band frontman said. “It didn’t conform to the obvious tropes, but everyone who heard it seemed to love it, so we knew we were onto something. I still couldn’t tell you what. … In some way, [“Driver’s Seat”] established an unrealistic precedent. It was a bit of a one-off.”
While the song wasn’t written about a car, Sniff ‘n’ the Tears enjoyed renewed success after Driver’s Seat” was used in a Pioneer car audio campaign in Holland in 1991, per the band’s website. The band has been reformed in various incarnations since.
In an interview with Athens Calling, Roberts reflected on the legacy of his classic song. “I think it has an energy and it’s unusual in its structure, the lyric is positive,” he said. “People seem to love it.”
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