353. The Cars, "The Cars"

 


There have been albums on here that I know inside and out, and that I love deeply, and both.  But this is the first album where I knew every song (except one, more on that soon) and I've never owned the album.  That's how many straight-up hits and super well-known songs are on here.  I mean, these are the first three songs:

Good Times Roll

My Best Friend's Girl

Just What I Needed

You can probably sing some or all of all three of those songs in your head right now.  And this isn't a greatest hits album!  Amazing.  I was talking to a friend about this album yesterday and he said it probably doesn't get the appreciation it deserves but it should absolutely be in the "nearly perfect album" collection.

So, the music.  As you already know, it's synth-pop or maybe electronic rock or whatever, I don't know, it's their sound and they invented it.  I know that a lot of what you hear today like MGMT and Miike Snow and Hot Chip and god so many more were directly influenced by this band and this record.  The instrumentation is just so un-rock but it works so well, and then you have Ric Ocasek's weird voice but his incredible, monstrously ear-wormy melodies are the star of this show.  PLUS, the first song, "Good Times Roll," has my favorite Bad Lyric of all time: "Let them leave you up in the air/Let them brush your rock and roll hair."  As the kids say, SCREAMING.

Released in 1978, this album had an immediate cultural impact.  If you were a youth in the 1980s, as I was, the song "Moving in Stereo" from this album is indelibly connected with Phoebe Cates in a bikini.  And it's not just "Fast Times at Ridgemont High"! The same song is in a bunch of movies and TV shows, and other songs from this album are as well.

Oh yeah, the one song.  It's "I'm in Touch With Your World" and until I listened to this album for this project I had never heard the song in my life.  I can see why; it's not nearly as catchy as the rest of the album, and is a little herky-jerky and clunky.  But still, going 8 for 9 is pretty good!

Does this album deserve to be in the Top 500? No question.

Comments

  1. StephenMay 24, 2021 at 1:59 PM

    My youthful relationship to music wasn't really about buying records. It was about waiting for songs to come on the radio. Listening to the radio *all the time*, hoping for that song to come back. I remember that experience with Elton John in 1976, Kiss in 1977, and "Just What I Needed" in 1978. Sure, I liked a lot of music, and listening to the radio was great no matter what was on (almost), but there was always that one song you wanted most. We were spending the summer of '78 in Maine, my dad was doing some research there, and I had no friends or activities, just the wait for Just What I Needed to come back on.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. TKMay 25, 2021 at 10:18 AM

      What a great memory. I remember doing the same thing, finger paused over the "record" button on the tape deck, in case a song I wanted got played.

      Delete

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