The Cars

Cars playlist

Contributor: Brian Greene

The Cars have always been about duality. They have been both accessible and avant-garde. In their late 1970s/early-to-mid-80s heyday they were admired both by people who flocked to commercial, fly-by-night new wave and synth pop acts, and others who appreciated the work of more experimental units like The Velvet Underground, early Roxy Music, and Berlin-era David Bowie. Their classic lineup had one member who looked like a male model and another who looked like your high school Computer Science teacher. They are both stylish and geeky, remote yet easy to understand. They are glam, bubblegum, synth pop, new wave, power pop, art rock, radio heroes, etc. all in one band.

Their trajectory through their vintage years was a fascinating thing to witness as it played itself out. Their first two albums, the eponymous debut from 1978 and ‘79’s Candy-O, both perfectly captured their multiple personalities. Each of those records contained easy-to-listen-to hits, such as My Best Friend’s Girl, Just What I Needed, and Let’s Go; but both also included denser, more complicated fare like Moving In Stereo, All Mixed Up, and Shoo Be Doo. Their fans in those earliest years were split into two factions, to my mind: those who were content with tapping the steering wheel to the radio hits, then those of us who appreciated the pure pop of those singles but who also enjoyed the more involved album tracks.

The insanely catchy Let’s Go was their biggest chart-maker to date when it scaled the top 5 in ’79, and the pop world appeared to be at their feet at that point. So how did they respond? By releasing their most complex, un-radio friendly record of all, with Panorama (1980). The single Touch And Go taunted fickle fans with its stubborn oddness, and the album’s opening title track was a song that thrilled people who dug stuff like early Suicide and frustrated those who wanted some easy synth pop to which they could sing along. ‘81’s Shake It Up was a commercial comeback to an extent, with the accessible and danceable title song and Victim Of Love, both of them friendly to the commercial side of the new wave world. But that album also had less easily penetrable deep cuts like the multi-layered, out-there Maybe Baby.

Finally, in ’84, the band reached the kind of mega-stardom they’d seemed destined for from the outset, with the release of Heartbeat City. At that time you couldn’t go 10 minutes without hearing the hits Magic, You Might Think, and Drive on the radio or seeing their videos on MTV. The Cars were no longer very weird and were now an act that belonged to the world at large rather than to an extensive yet confined set of avid fans. And then, typical of the band, they broke up just four years later, after issuing only one more (forgettable) album in ‘87’s yawn-inducing Door To Door.

Most “comeback” albums would have been better left in their makers’ closets, but The Cars’ 2011 set Move Like This thrilled their most ardent fans with its razor-sharp power pop. Whether it will be their last album or not is to be seen. They didn’t need to make that fine record to cement their place in popular music history – it was just some hook-laden gravy.

Ric Ocasek (1944–2019)

Benjamin Orr (1947–2000)

The Cars facebook

Ric Ocasek website

Greg Hawkes facebook

The Cars biography (iTunes)

This is Brian Greene’s fifth post for Toppermost. You can find his blog here.

TopperPost #318