The Cars

About

New Wave was the far more commercial successor to punk rock, with bands like The Car, Blondie, Devo, and The B-52’s emphasizing big hook, fast tempo, clever lyric, 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 Ro, who was already a grande dame of pop. Ocasek and singer and bassist Benjamin Orr were old pal, having been playing together for 10 year. 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 Rabbit, 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 <i>fast</i>, 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 Car. 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 1970. .

via Apple Music

The Clerk says

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