10 Perfect Rock Albums For Pop Fans
6. The Cars - The Cars
As the '70s came to an end, there was an underlying question of what was going to happen to punk rock. The Sex Pistols had broken up, the Ramones and the Clash were trying to move beyond punk altogether, and a little band named Van Halen was sprouting up from California to set the world on fire again. Punk had slowly turned itself into new wave, and the Cars made it their calling card on their debut record.
For a genre that almost seems too sterile to take seriously some of the time, the Cars' debut is a care free good time from front to back, taking all of the pop tropes that you heard from acts like the Beatles and the Stones and twisting them into their warped version of love songs. As much as a song like Just What I Needed or Good Times Roll may have been fine pop songs on their own, what makes them go are the subtle touches that they bring to the table, like Benjamin Orr's strange delivery or Elliot Easton's guitar parts delving into the world of jazz some of the time.
Don't think that this is an experimental art piece though. Despite all of the glossy production and the few times where they go off the rails, nearly every single one of the tracks on here have hit potential, like the drive of My Best Friend's Girl or the electronic bits of Moving In Stereo. The Cars had enough gas in the tank to keep things going for the next decade, but this record could practically be their own Greatest Hits package.