The Cars

Essential Albums

  • Heartbeat City
    Heartbeat City
    Heartbeat City

    Unlike many bands that predated MTV, The Cars managed to make the transition to video stars. And the group’s fifth album, Heartbeat City, was well-timed, since it was released in 1984—which Rolling Stone later called “Pop’s Greatest Year.” Heartbeat City would become The Cars’ biggest album. It would also foster intra-band resentment, and help fuel a break-up. The members of The Cars were determined to integrate new recording technology into their music, including drum machines and samplers. For help in the studio, they hired an obsessive new producer, Robert John “Mutt” Lange, who’d overseen hits for Def Leppard and Foreigner. The Cars’ 1978 debut had taken two weeks to record; Heartbeat City, by contrast, took between six and nine months (though accounts vary). That’s largely because Lange was a taskmaster, one who thought nothing of spending two days just tuning Benjamin Orr’s bass guitar. As a result of all that edgeless perfection, Heartbeat City has an overpowering feel; it’s almost too ornamental to feel human. Even Ocasek would later admit the music “sometimes feels stiff”. The commitment to modern tech mostly elbowed guitarist Elliot Easton and drummer David Robinson, while Orr contributes lead vocals to only two songs. The only trademark Cars sounds on Heartbeat City come courtesy of Ocasek’s easily identifiable voice, and the stellar keyboards of Greg Hawkes, who adds a great hook—actually, two of them—to “Hello Again”. Still, while Heartbeat City shifted The Cars’ musical direction, the album yielded several singles, including “You Might Think”, “Magic”, “Hello Again” and Orr’s smash hit “Drive”, which a joined a short list of grim pop songs fans mistakenly believed to be romantic: The airy ballad feels gentle and intimate, and Orr’s vocal is like a silk shirt come to life, but the lyrics are unkind, maybe even sinister (“Who’s gonna plug their ears when you scream?”). Ocasek joked that the band broke up four times while making Heartbeat City. There’s bound to be resentment when suddenly, five albums into a career, three key players are pushed to the side. The Cars made one more album before dissolving for good, but it seems clear that Heartbeat City, for all its success, is the album that drove the group members away from each other.

  • Candy-O
    Candy-O
    Candy-O

    With 1979’s Candy-O, The Cars didn’t change the New Wave sound that had made the band’s debut album so successful. After all, if it ain’t broke, why fix it? For Candy-O, the members of the Boston quintet once again turned to Roy Thomas Baker, who’d guided the first four Queen albums, as well as acts like Free, Hawkwind and Journey. Baker knew how to build thickly-layered tracks full of harmonies, while also keeping a song moving forward. As a result, there’s a chilly efficiency to Candy-O, one that suits singer Ric Ocasek, whose lyrics are heavy on quips and curdled romance (“When I was crazy, I thought you were great”). Ocasek had a gift for concise lines that summarise big ideas or feelings: “Alienation is the craze,” he sings in “Double Life”—and there’s no better way to describe life in late-1970s America. Throughout Candy-O, keyboardist Greg Hawkes devises great, quirky hooks on tracks like “Let’s Go”—the band’s biggest single at the time—and “Lust for Kicks”. And while drummer David Robinson isn’t fancy or showy, he plays with a firm snap that roots the lively arrangements, and his work on “It’s All I Can Do”, sung by bassist Benjamin Orr, shows how much can be accomplished with just a snare, hi-hat, bass drum and some sure-handed syncopation. There are a few hints here as to where The Cars were heading with their music: On “Double Life”, Robinson plays alongside a drum machine, and “Shoo Be Doo” is a dissonant and forbidding hellscape that lasts less than two minutes, functioning as a bridge out of “Double Life” and into the title track. More importantly, “Shoo Be Doo” is a bridge to the next Cars album, which would be darker, weirder and more electronic than any of the group’s previous efforts.

  • The Cars
    The Cars
    The Cars

    New Wave was the far more commercial successor to punk rock, with bands like The Cars, Blondie, Devo and The B-52’s emphasizing big hooks, fast tempos, clever lyrics and dance-floor rhythms borrowed from disco and krautrock. It was youthful music, but not every New Waver was a newbie: When The Cars released their self-titled debut album in 1978, singer Ric Ocasek was a relatively ancient 34 years old. For context, he was born the same year as Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page, who had passed through stardom and into near retirement by 1978, and Diana Ross, who was already a grande dame of pop. Ocasek and singer and bassist Benjamin Orr were old pals, having been playing together for 10 years. They’d had a shot at the big time when their group Milkwood—an acoustic, Crosby, Stills & Nash-style folk band—released an album in 1972. The band failed to connect, so the two friends soldiered on in different formations and bands—Richard and the Rabbits, the acoustic duo Ocasek and Orr, the band Cap’n Swing—but nothing worked. What Ocasek learned from failure was that he needed to make music that moved fast, with tunes that were so thoroughly honed and plotted out that every element was a hook—an approach that soon became the mission statement for his next group: The Cars. It wasn’t just the band’s name that inspired automobile metaphors from reviewers and headline writers; The Cars’ music is the sonic equivalent of a sleek Pontiac Firebird with a 220 horsepower engine. No wonder the group became the top-selling New Wave act of the late 1970s. The Cars unleashed a trio of tunes—“Just What I Needed”, “My Best Friend’s Girl” and “Good Times Roll”—that would become hits on both rock radio and the singles charts, proving not only The Cars’ crossover appeal, but also the viability of New Wave. Ocasek’s lyrics lean toward the cryptic, and are full of a muted emotionality that feels tense and clipped, but also clever (it’s hard to imagine any other singer writing a line like “Let them brush your rock ’n’ roll hair” and making it sound like good advice). His thin, nervous voice can be heard on five tracks here, while Orr handles the rest, including “Just What I Needed”, “Bye Bye Love” and “Moving in Stereo”—the latter of which was etched into pop culture history a few years later, when it soundtracked an infamous poolside scene in 1982’s Fast Times at Ridgemont High. Good times.

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About The Cars

The Cars were the perfect bridge between guitar-forward ’70s rock bands and keyboard-driven ’80s pop stars. Led by co-vocalists Ric Ocasek and Ben Orr, the quintet favoured sharp power pop (“Just What I Needed”), moody synth sculptures (“Moving In Stereo”) and the occasional wistful ballad (“Drive”). Ocasek and Orr met as teenagers in the ’60s while both were living in Cleveland. The duo played together in multiple bands before landing in Boston and forming The Cars in 1976 with guitarist Elliot Easton, keyboardist Greg Hawkes and ex-Modern Lovers drummer David Robinson. Their first two albums, a 1978 self-titled LP and 1979’s Candy-O, established the band as cutting-edge rockers. After detours into more experimental sounds (the Suicide-inspired 1980 LP Panorama), they became the toast of ’80s pop (and video) with hits such as “Magic” and “You Might Think” before disbanding in 1988. Ocasek went on to become a successful producer, helming Weezer’s 1994 debut. The Cars eventually regrouped without Orr, who passed away in 2000 from pancreatic cancer, for 2011’s well-received Move Like This and a stirring live performance at the band's 2018 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction. And although Ocasek’s 2019 death likely quashed future activity, the diverse artists that subsequently paid tribute to his memory—to name a few, The Killers, Elton John, Red Hot Chili Peppers and Letters to Cleo’s Kay Hanley—illustrate that The Cars’ legacy as connectors is secure.

ORIGIN
Boston, MA, United States
FORMED
1976
GENRE
Rock

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