There are certain songs that, when I hear them, I don't want to write that song. Because I can't, it already exists. But I want to write one like it. "Midnight Rider" by The Allman Brothers Band is a song that I think probably inspired Queen of California.
I love a road song. I also love lyrics that beat against one another. And in the case of "I don't own the clothes I'm wearing, and the road goes on forever", they are seemingly disparate ideas that are actually incredible when you combine them and get that large sense of that abstract world from these two competing ideas. I don't own the clothes I'm wearing, and by the way, the road goes on forever. "Midnight Rider" by The Allman Brothers Band. It's as cool as cool gets.