Songfacts®:

• "Life Is A Highway" is by far the most popular Rascal Flatts song, but it's a cover; the song was written and originally recorded by the Canadian singer Tom Cochrane, whose 1991 version went to #6 in America. Rascal Flatts were best known for a very different song: "What Hurts The Most," which was also a cover (originally by Mark Wills). That song was a hit in the spring of 2006, a few months before their version of "Life Is A Highway" revved past it.
• Rascal Flatts covered the song for the Pixar film Cars, which ended up being a blockbuster and spawning a franchise. The song may be a bit on-the-nose for a film about anthropomorphic vehicles, but it was a brilliant choice: kids loved the song and their parents (especially the dads) recognized it.
  
  Covering the song was the brainchild of Pixar boss John Lasseter, a Rascal Flatts fan. When he told the band about his movie, they were dubious.
  
  "We were like, 'Well, that sounds weird. So, the cars are gonna talk?'" lead singer Gary LeVox said in a Songfacts interview.
  
  Lasseter assured them it would work, and since he had pulled off Toy Story, the band knew better than to doubt him. They did have some qualms about covering a song they didn't think could be improved.
  
  "There's certain songs you just wanna leave alone," LeVox said. "'Life Is A Highway' is one of them with Tom Cochrane." Lasseter, though, convinced them to do it, toning down the guitars a bit and making the song more kid-friendly.
• "Life Is A Highway" quickly became Rascal Flatts' most popular live song, and although it didn't chart as high as "What Hurts The Most," it earned far more downloads and streams. In the streaming era it was helped by the proliferation of road trip playlists - hard to find one without the song on it.
• The song was used on the Cars soundtrack, which sold over a million copies in America. It was also added as a bonus track to the Rascal Flatts album Me And My Gang, which sold 4 million.
• Dann Huff, who started working with the band on the Me And My Gang album, produced the track. Huff, who worked on the next two Rascal Flatts albums as well, later worked on hits for Kelly Clarkson ("Mr. Know It All"), Hunter Hayes ("Wanted") and Riley Green ("Worst Way").
• Pixar had a good business reason for ordering a cover version of this song instead of using the original: They're owned by Disney and Rascal Flatts was signed to Lyric Street Records, a Disney subsidiary.
• The song became a brand for Rascal Flatts. They broke up in 2020, and when they reunited in 2025, they called their reunion trek the Life Is A Highway tour. They also released an album that year called Life Is a Highway: Refueled Duets, with Lzzy Hale duetting on the track.