Until this past week, I had never listened to The Cars’ eponymous debut album in its entirety, but I never really needed to. Coming of age in the 80s this was a band that was utterly ubiquitous and such an integral part of the musical landscape that I never really needed to own or listen to their albums to be really familiar with the band. This was the time of Casey Kasem’s Top 40 Countdown, listened to weekly and often with my finger’s poised near the record button on my cassette radio in order to tape the latest Prince, Huey Lewis & The News, Michael Jackson, Cindi Lauper, or Howard Jones.
What is remarkable about The Cars, released in June of 1978, is just how much of its short but potent 35 minutes I was already competely familiar with and could sing along to—at least on the choruses—without listening to hardly any terrestrial radio in over a decade or ever owning the album. Of the nine tracks, seven of them are instantly recognizable to anyone who listened to the radio in the 80s (or who listens to “classic” rock radio stations now…and the fact that the music I grew up with is now classic rock is a topic for another time).
The album opens with the laconic shuffle of “Good Times Roll” which is immediately followed by the iconic handclap intro to “My Best Friend’s Girl” and then that is followed by the sharp opening chords of “Just What I Needed.” In other words, the first third of the album are massive and long-lasting hits.
Now, that’s the way to start a record.
It’s only with the fourth track, “I’m in Touch With Your World” that I was in uncharted territory. Never having heard any but the most popular of songs by The Cars, and those songs sounding so completely their own, its easy to forget that they were part of the New Wave sound that was emerging in the late 1970s along with bands like the Talking Heads and Blondie. Only by hearing their lesser known tracks, was I able to hear those shared influences clearly for the first time. In fact, the weird, off-kilter and jangly “I’m in Touch With Your World” reminds me quite a bit of the Talking Heads early work.
This is followed by the danceable “Don’t Cha Stop,” the only other song I had never heard from the album, a Ramones-meets-Blondie, very danceable rock song.
The last four tracks are stone-cold classics: “You’re All I’ve Got Tonight,” “Bye Bye Love,” “Moving in Stereo,” and “All Mixed Up.”
I mean, on this one album, The Cars had more influential hits than some bands have in a career. As a point of comparison, the Talking Head’s first album had only one major hit song on it (“Psycho Killer”). A debut album that is almost entirely synonymous with a “best of” album is pretty damned impressive.
None of these songs changed my life. I can’t tell you the first time I heard them, nor do I particularly miss them if I haven’t heard them in a long while. Yet, the songs from this album are inextricably linked to my musical psyche, to growing up in the 80s, and to all the nostalgia that reflecting on those times brings about: simpler times, innocence of youth, etc. As I’ve explored this and their other albums, I’ve listened to more of The Cars’ music this week than I ever have before and found some interesting and surprising discoveries along the way. But there is something to be said for returning to the songs that made up the soundtrack of one’s youth. Even if you aren’t a huge fan of The Cars, I guarantee that listening to their first album will be a treat.
Let the good times roll indeed.