The Cars came busting out of Boston with their polished new wave attack on a 1978 debut album that plastered them all over rock radio. They also began to cross over pretty early on to pop audiences who grooved to their precise rhythmic attack and plentiful hooks.
What Cars’ songs hit the biggest on the Billboard pop charts? Let’s take a look at five sure shots from this legendary quintet.
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5. “Let’s Go” from Candy-O (No. 14 in 1979)
Whenever a band comes out of the gate with a debut album as accomplished and full of gems as The Cars managed to do, it’s natural to wonder what they might do for an encore. Candy-O, the band’s 1979 follow-up, went a bit darker and weirder. But they did something clever by starting off the album with “Let’s Go,” also choosing it as the first single. The song, upbeat and uptempo, is very much in keeping with the spirit of the debut record, giving fans a smooth transition into what they were trying to do with Candy-O. “Let’s Go,” propulsive as a musical starter’s pistol, also gave them their first Top-20 single.
4. “You Might Think” from Heartbeat City (No. 7 in 1984)
The Cars’ first four albums were all produced by Roy Thomas Baker, and, considering the quality of those records, it was clearly a productive relationship. But it’s sometimes good to try out different chemistry, and it’s hard to argue with the results the band achieved while working with Mutt Lange on Heartbeat City. Everything on the record gleams just a little bit brighter, the guitars hit a little bit harder, and it’s all streamlined just right for what was required in 1984. And “You Might Think,” one of Ric Ocasek’s most flab-free pop songs, was the perfect track to introduce this version of The Cars to the world.
3. “Tonight She Comes” from Greatest Hits (No. 7 in 1985)
Consider “Tonight She Comes” to be a kind of victory lap for the band. At the end of the massively successful cycle for Heartbeat City, which included five Top-40 singles and encompassed an appearance at Live Aid, the band hustled out a Greatest Hits compilation to capitalize on that momentum. To sweeten the deal, they dropped this incredibly catchy single that Ocasek had initially intended for a solo record. In many ways, it was a last hurrah for the band, because their next album, Door to Door in 1987, found them drained of energy and headed for a breakup.
2. “Shake It Up” from Shake It Up (No. 4 in 1981)
Panorama, released in 1980, is the one Cars’ album that never quite found a footing on radio. The lead single, “Touch and Go,” barely scraped the Top 40, even though many of the band’s fans cite it as one of their finest achievements. It’s clear upon hearing “Shake It Up” that the band was thinking in terms of getting back to the charts, and the effort was worth it. The song had been trotted out several times in previous Cars’ sessions over the years until they finally found the right feel for it, complete with Greg Hawkes’ spiraling synthesizers, David Robinson’s relentless beat, and Elliot Easton’s massive guitar solo.
1. “Drive” from Heartbeat City (No. 3 in 1984)
The Cars had done ballads before and done them well—”All Mixed Up” and “I’m Not the One” are a couple of examples. But they’d always reserved them for album tracks, and kept the singles on the peppier side. They couldn’t hold back “Drive,” a song that contradicts, in spectacular fashion, all the critics who heard them as bloodless and cold. Part of that is obviously Ocasek’s writing, as he located the heartbreak in trying to save someone who doesn’t want to be saved. And part of it is the heart-rending vocal by Ben Orr, who plays it straight and lets the natural ache in his voice do all the work.
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