The Cars

VEGANGELICA · 09-16-2011, 09:19 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Burning Down

As far as I can tell, the search function is not turning up a general thread for The Cars. So I'm making one. Talk about this great band here!

Quote:

Originally Posted by Necromancer

One of their best singles Drive, would not be the same without Benjamin Orr on vocals. The Cars were a very versatile band out of the early new wave scene in the 70s, which infused a lot of different styles into their sound, Rock, Hard rock, Art rock, New wave, Post-punk, Synthpop, Power pop, etc. I'm glad they reformed the band, I hope they play Columbus, Ohio, where Ric Ocasek and Benjamin Orr first met and performed as a duo back in the early 70s, that would be a good home coming for Ric Ocasek and a tribute to Benjamin Orr.

I remembered this morning that Jackhammer once commented he had no idea what music appealed to me even after I had been at MusicBanter for a year. So I searched for a thread about The Cars and see that luckily you made one already, Burning Down.

I love many of The Cars' songs from their Heartbreak City album because I heard them during my formative teen years, when their catchy and sometimes odd lyrics and raw emotion about relationship issues appealed to me since I was starting to pay more attention to relationships then.

Their lyrics on that album aren't very deep and sometimes use quite a few filler words just for the sake of rhyming, I suspect, but musically I like the feel of the songs very much. The Cars do upbeat and peppy songs well, and also despondent ones with a hollow feel. I think their songs are aimed at tweens and teens, but I still like them!

Some of my favorites:

The Cars - "You might think" . . . Of course!

This is the Cars' song that first caught my attention. Others in the thread have mentioned it, too. I like Ric's voice, the quirky elements (his brief "You kept it going 'til the sun fell down" solo), and the persistent rhythm guitar:

The Cars - "Why Can't I Have You"
Mmm...I like the perturbed feeling of this heartbreak song. I appreciate that the lyrics have some unexpected, vivid sections, such as, "Oh candy smile, all the while, glinting, Your eyes like mica, a lethal pout, hinting," among the trite lines that include these: "Baby, why can’t I have you? You're breakin’ my heart in two, You know what I’m goin’ through." Normally I would roll my eyes at the trite lyrics, but the peculiar ones ("eyes like mica") save the song, in my opinion:

The Cars - I'm not the one"
A nice depressing song with a slow, troubled sound. This song gets me down.

It's a good catharsis song for doing some wallowing in despair in order to get beyond it.

Unknown Soldier · 09-16-2011, 12:26 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by VEGANGELICA

I love many of The Cars' songs from their Heartbreak City album because I heard them during my formative teen years, when their catchy and sometimes odd lyrics and raw emotion about relationship issues appealed to me since I was starting to pay more attention to relationships then.

This is interesting as the basic premise behind most of the Cars songs are about doomed relationships and most importantly about unattainable women (The songs could easily be switched though for a womans point of view) But the whole concept behind the Cars was always extreme negativity, despite the number of upbeat sounding songs they put out. Panorama was always their most negative and darkest album.

Sure by the time of Heartbeat City Ric Ocasek was cutting and pasting a lot of his earlier lyrics which I always thought were great anyway.