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The Cars
From HitStory, the pop encyclopedia of School of Rock · Artist
The Cars was an American rock band, formed in Boston in 1976. The line-up consisted of Ric Ocasek (rhythm guitar), Benjamin Orr (bass), Elliot Easton (lead guitar), Greg Hawkes (keyboards) and David Robinson (drums). Ocasek and Orr shared the lead vocals. Ocasek was the leader and wrote almost every song, which later led to friction. Ocasek and Orr knew each other from Ohio, played in various bands in Columbus and Ann Arbor, and moved to Boston in the early 1970s.
Music and breakthrough
In 1978 the band was named best new act in a Rolling Stone readers' poll. The debut album The Cars (1978) sold six million copies. There were four top 10 hits in the United States: Shake It Up (1981), You Might Think (1984), Drive (1984) and Tonight She Comes (1985). For You Might Think the group received the Video of the Year award at the first MTV Video Music Awards in 1984. In 1988 the band stopped. Orr died in 2000. In 2011 the last album, Move Like This, appeared, and in 2018 the group was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Ocasek died in 2019.
Influence
The Cars were at the forefront of merging guitar-driven rock of the 1970s with the new synthesizer pop of the early 1980s. The critic Robert Palmer spoke of a mixture of punk minimalism, art rock, rockabilly and the concision of power pop. The result is tight, melodic and cool, with a prominent role for the synthesizer.
Listening
Discography
Studio albums
- 1978The Cars
- 1979Candy‐O
- 1980Panorama
- 1981Shake It Up
- 1984Heartbeat City
- 1987Door to Door
- 2011Move Like This
Mentioned in other articles
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It became a sound of new wave and synth-pop, from The Cars and Japan to Talking Heads, and later of Michael Jackson and Madonna.