The Cars - The Cars

Got this on the fact it was in the recent Babble Top 100. It's quite hooksy. I'm just mostly familiar with the singles, especially "Just What I Needed" but the album tracks are also quite good. They prove to be the master thieves on "My Best Friend's Girl", with a standard I-IV-V chord, a cliched rockabilly riff and the instrumental break from The Beatles' "I Will". Even the fillers are quite interesting, "Don Cha Stop" being an obvious one, but still listenable anyway. And I like the closer "All Mixed Up" which is what New Wave Prog would sound like.

The Cars - Greatest Hits

Mostly overplayed on radio. I should know, I used to listen to a New Wave Internet Station non-stop so not much surprises here. The best song here is "Since You're Gone" which does a pretty good approximation of a what if? scenario had Dylan gone electric and invented New Wave in the mid-60s. "Drive" is pretty much maudlin shite, but isn't it EFFECTIVE maudlin shite? The eerie lonesome synths, the disembodied female vocals. My most vivid memory of this song was the Live Aid benefit where they used it as background music to starving Ethiopians. Most inappropriate. No food also, where got cars? Otherwise, "You Might Think" is highly fun, although "Magic", with its gated reverb drums, and "Let's Go", with its synthesised handclaps, sound incredibly dated. It also has the title track from "Heartbeat City", which I thought was the weakest song off the album, anyway.