I was singing along with Magnolia in the car and I went ‘hang on…’
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The Boys Next Door - Door Door
Van Halen & The Cars first albums are iconic and part of the musical lexicon.
I was only a year old when these albums came out so I’m not old enough to have heard them in context, but it’s hard to imagine what these would have sounded like at a time when the radio was all Eagles and Bee Gees.
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La Roux- self titled.
On this note…Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers…
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The Cars was one of the first albums that broke away from the US mainstream that broke into the charts.
(imo) It was more British than American (which was a good thing at the time).
It was just so different to what I was used to hearing…and it was brilliant (still is).
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I don’t expect anyone to agree with me, but I’ve always put The Cars in the category of noise organisers, rather than…pop stars.
Blondie/Sex Pistols/Talking Heads/Men At Work/DD…
Some people say that view is damning them with faint praise or diminishing them as musicians… but I really feel like they…compiled cool sounds more than wrote songs.
I wouldn’t compare them to Steve Miller or Cheap Trick, even though that would be very easy to do.
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I’m not sure I even understand what you’re saying but it seems like a criticism to me (rightly of wrongly).
Their first two albums were two of the best albums to come out during that period. Clever, quirky songs and having two lead vocalists also gave them an edge on their competitors.
I don’t know why you would choose to mention them in the same breath as Steve Miller given they’re nothing alike.
Even Cheap Trick is a poor comparison (imo).
Abracadabra could be a (imo bad) Cars song.
Dream Police was that same combo of synth and guitar, but of course my point was that The Cars were Not like them.
And it wasn’t a criticism at all.
I’ll throw in J Giels as another band they were not like but could be thrown in with.
J. Geils Band were a Blues Band who changed in the late 70s to making catchy pop music…nothing like The Cars.
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I think I get it if you’d said say, New Order, but Blondie, for one? Do you mean the cleverness of pop song craft was lacking, and the other facets masked it?
If you want to draw a comparison between Cheap Trick and The Cars, it’s probably that their 70’s to very early 80’s output was great, then they started pumping out overly polished and horribly overproduced stuff and went downhill fast.
The main difference is that CT stayed together and managed to redeem themselves by being a great live act and releasing halfway decent albums from the mid-90’s onwards.
Both The Cars and Cheap Trick are misrepresented by their mega-unit shifting (though very much inferior) 80’s output.
Edit: I’d include Heart in this comparison too… Many, many good 70’s acts tarnished their reputations with the bilge they put out in the mid-late 80’s.
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I’m not a huge Blondie fan either. I don’t hate it, but I think it is overplayed and I’m rather sick of most of it. It’s one of those things that seems to come on the radio / video channel when you were hoping for something else.
I was a huge Heart fan (see my list of top ten debut albums 
) and eagerly awaited each new album…they released some great albums and then hit the wall in the early 80s…when they came back, the image makers had got to them (which the Wilson sisters have readily admitted).
They still had a few classic Heart type tracks on their eponymous album but are now more well known for their ballads ( 
) that stormed the US charts in the mid 80s.
I think that the album that surprised me with the “I can’t believe this is a first album” would have to be Pearl Jam’s 10. Just amazing song writing and exceptional playing. Next The Cars. Just loved every single song.
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I love Blondie, but find it hard to listen to that batch of half a dozen or so completely overplayed tunes. These days I really enjoy putting on their more streamlined or simplified tracks like “Dreaming” or “Union City Blue”.
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I’m talking about songwriting style, and that…despite flourishes that might have sounded Cars-ish from the bands I’ve mentioned, the Cars were a different breed.
They approached songs differently.
I’m not sure anyone’s quite on my wavelength here and that’s fine, but I’m certainly not disparaging The Cars.
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Union City Blue is my favourite song of theirs.
Always has been.
Atomic is #2.
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Blondie’s Greatest Hits album is an absolute gem…but I could never really get into any of their albums.
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Wonderful singles band
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