I mean, it certainly never hurts a song to soundtrack The Cars almost always went for the kill with their singles, but for whatever reason -- maybe exhaustion after four albums in four years -- they let off the throttle a little with The first big ballad for The Cars, a risk that paid off with their biggest chart success, a No.
It's not Ocasek's strongest lyric or greatest chorus -- though that gang vocal on the title is pretty undeniable -- but the good times were already off and rolling for The Cars in the decade to come before his voice even graced the track.For all the enduring FM dominance of The Cars' first two albums, it took until fourth album The Cars were not generally a band known for their fury, but Ric Ocasek was not above letting lust get the better of him on certain occasions. “It took on more life than I thought it would,” Ocasek told Of course, calling it a "big Cars single" is probably a misnomer in the first place; though "Touch and Go" marked the fourth of the band's 13 Top 40 entries, it stalled at No. The track, with hand claps, a futuristic synth line, and dual-guitar mastery, became the Cars’ first Top 20 hit, and the first single for their second album, “We started out wanting to be electric and straight-ahead rock, and it kind of turned into an artier kind of thing,” Cars keyboardist Greg Hawkes once said of the way the band fine-tuned its sound in the early days.
Ocasek’s keen grasp of pop-music architecture sometimes gave him pause.
Some longtime fans may have bemoaned the change-up -- down to Orr taking the lead vocal -- as a softening of the band's edge. But there's little denying 35 years later that "Drive" remains singular among all the era's pop music, a song of such tremendous emotional intensity, lyrical intimacy and overwhelmingly lush production that it feels like a love song even though no lyrics specifically reveal it as such. Elliot Easton, Ric Ocasek, Greg Hawkes, Benjamin Orr and David Robinson of the Cars at the World's Fair grounds in Brussels, Belgium 1978 One of Ocasek’s earliest Cars compositions, and one of his greatest, “My Best Friend’s Girl” showed his love for Fifties rock & roll, particularly Buddy Holly and Carl Perkins, with the song’s wiry guitar part and youthful sense of infatuation and angst. “I just figured having a girlfriend stolen was probably something that happened to a lot of people.” The second single from the band’s debut LP, it hit the Top 40, offering a slick New Wave twist on classic-rock tropes as Ocasek tossed off playfully surreal references to “suede blue eyes” and “nuclear boots.” As he later recalled, “At some point, I realized my lyrics didn’t include the words ‘My Best Friend’s Girl.’ So I pulled out the lyrics someone had typed up and added a chorus in the margin in pen: ‘She’s my best friend’s girl/She’s my best friend’s girl/But she used to be mine.’ ” Already the sexiest song the Cars would ever record, thanks to an uncharacteristically slithery groove and an insinuating rhythm-guitar part, “Moving in Stereo” would hold a special place in Gen X iconography, after its instrumental soundtracked the infamous moment in 1982’s “Sometimes good time can be the hook itself,” Ocasek told Though it seems to share a sentiment with a slew of vintage rock and R&B tunes, “Good Times Roll” distances itself from the carefree mood of, say, Shirley and Lee’s 1956 hit “Let the Good Times Roll” with its hard-edged midtempo strut, blaring backing vocals, and Ocasek’s stylized singing.
It was kinda like not about good times at all.” Ocasek and the Cars walked a fascinating line between shiny power pop and total weirdness; “You’re All I’ve Got Tonight” is in both places at once, with a whole lot going on in its four minutes and 14 seconds, from the Queen-ly backing vocals (thanks, no doubt, to a shared producer in Roy Thomas Baker), a flanged drum intro, a freaky harpsichord-like keyboard part in the first verse, and a monster chorus. "Drive" (Heartbeat City, 1984) The first big ballad for The Cars, a risk that paid off with their biggest … Billboard is part of MRC Media and Info, a division of MRC. The song it accompanies is just as dynamite, though, a gem that marries '70s power-pop energy to '60s pop classicism -- down to Ocasek's unforgettable spoken-word break ("But you kept it going... till the sun fell down"), delivered halfway between Orbison and Elvis. He gave this 1979 single, about a free-spirited girl who won’t settle down, to Benjamin Orr to sing. "Just What I Needed" undoubtedly falls under the latter camp: For its stupefyingly simple and brilliant stop-start intro, for its addictive post-verse synth whine, for its full-release chorus rush, for its first two lines summing up toxic romance better than any entire song has in the 40 years since ("I don't mind you coming here, and wasting all my time/ 'Coz when you're standing oh so near, I kinda lose my mind.") All those drum sounds were played into a computer, according to an The Cars had already released five albums and solidified their legacy by 1985 when Elektra released their Ocasek didn’t enjoy as many hits as a solo artist, despite making several strong albums on his own. . Their many hits throughout the late '70s and '80s were sleek, steady, piston-pumping pieces of gleaming machinery, marvels of modern science. But this delicate single from his 1986 LP Twenty-four years after their previous album, the Cars reconvened in 2011 for what would be their final one. No simple love song, and its end result sounds more like the product of a dark fixation, one reason the Ocasek uses repetition for maximum impact in “Dangerous Type”: He runs through the four-line hook 10 different times in four and a half minutes.
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