Cars Included in Top 200 Definitive Albums
The Rock n’ Roll Hall of Fame and National Association of Recording Merchandisers have recently released the top 200 definitive albums in Rock n’ Roll history. We are pleased to announce The Cars self-titled album was included on this list among such legends as the Beatles, Beach Boys and U2. To view the entire list head over to The Rock N' Roll Hall of Fame.
Just What I Needed: The Cars Anthology
| Review by Greg Prato allmusic.com | |
|  While casual admirers of the Cars can stick with their 1985 Greatest Hits collection, more serious fans should go right to the more thorough two-CD set Just What I Needed: The Cars Anthology. Whereas Greatest Hits stuck more or less with their singles, The Cars Anthology contains strong album cuts, non-album B-sides, demos, and unreleased takes, as well as all the expected hits (and a 27-page booklet crammed with rare photos and the band's bio). Just about every rock fan is long familiar with such tracks as "Just What I Needed," "Shake It Up," "Magic," and "Let's Go" (to name a few), but the collection's main attraction is its abundance of unfamiliar material. Such previously released album tracks as "Dangerous Type," "Gimme Some Slack," and "Cruiser" are highlights, as are the rarities "Cool Fool" (one of their hardest-rocking tracks ever), "That's It," a cover of Iggy Pop's "Funtime," and a pair of album-closing early demos ("Leave or Stay" and "Ta Ta Wayo Wayo"). At nearly two and a half hours long, Just What I Needed: The Cars Anthology is the ultimate Cars collection, which only confirms their standing as one of the finest bands of the new wave era.
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Shake It Up
Review by Greg Prato allmusic.com
By augmenting their sound with more synthesizers, electronics, and drum machines, the Cars' fourth release, Shake It Up (1981, Elektra), helped bridge their hard rock-based early work (1978's The Cars) with the futuristic-pop direction of 1984's Heartbeat City. The band's sound may have been evolving with each succeeding album, but Ric Ocasek was still writing compelling new wave compositions despite all the change, many of which would ultimately become rock & roll standards. The up-tempo title track remains a party favorite to this day (reaching number four on the singles charts), while the melancholic "Since You're Gone" remains one of Ocasek's best-ever tales of heartbreak. Intriguing videos were made for both songs, officially introducing the band to the MTV/video age. Like it's predecessor, 1980's Panorama, filler is present ("This Could Be Love," "Maybe Baby"), but many lesser-known album tracks prove to be highlights: the almost entirely synth-oriented tracks "Think It Over" and "A Dream Away," the rocking "Cruiser," plus the more pop-oriented "I'm Not the One" and "Victim of Love." Although Shake It Up was another resounding commercial success, their next album would be the one that made the Cars one of rock's quintessential acts of the '80s.
The Cars
Review By KIT RACHLIS Rolling Stone
The first sound you hear on "Just What I Needed," the single from
the Cars' debut album, is the repeated thump of bass notes against the short, metallic slash of guitar. It's a magnificent noise: loud, elemental and relentless. But the Cars–the best band to come out of Boston since J. Geils–aren't interested in simply traveling the interstates of rock & roll. They'll go there for the rush, but they prefer the stop-and-go quirks of two lanes. Before "Just What I Needed" is over, guitarist Elliot Easton has burned rubber making a U-turn with his solo, and Greg Hawkes' synthesizer has double-clutched the melody. Leader Ric Ocasek once sang that he lived on "emotion and comic relief," and it's in this tension of opposites that he and his group find relief (comic or otherwise) between the desire for frontal assault and the preference for oblique strategies. This is the organizing principle behind not only the single but the entire LP, which is almost evenly divided between pop songs and pretentious attempts at art.
The pop songs are wonderful. (Besides "Just What I Needed," they include "My Best Friend's Girl" and "You're All I've Got Tonight.") Easy and eccentric at the same time, all are potential hits. The melodies whoosh out as if on casters, custom-built for the interlocked but constantly shifting blocks of rhythm, while Ocasek's lyrics explode in telegraphic bursts of images and attacks ("You always knew to wear it well/You look so fancy I can tell"). Neither Ocasek nor bassist Ben Orr have striking voices, but by playing off the former's distant, near-mechanical phrasing against the latter's sweet-and-low delivery, the band achieves real emotional flexibility.
As long as the Cars' avant-garde instincts are servicing their rock & roll impulses, the songs bristle and–in their harsher, more angular moments ("Bye Bye Love," "Don't Cha Stop")–bray. The album comes apart only when it becomes arty and falls prey to producer Roy Thomas Baker's lacquered sound and the group's own penchant for electronic effects. "I'm in Touch with Your World" and "Moving in Stereo" are the kind of songs that certify psychedelia's bad name. But these are the mistakes of a band that wants it both ways–and who can blame rock & rollers for that?
