Cars (song)

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"Cars" is a 1979 song by Gary Numan, released as a single and on the album The Pleasure Principle. It reached the top of the charts in several countries and is today considered a classic rock staple. However, its popularity was so enormous that it overshadowed much of the rest of Numan's career in the 1980s, causing him to be thought of in later years as a one-hit wonder.

The song was the first release credited solely to Gary Numan after he dropped the band name Tubeway Army, with which he had released four singles and two LPs, including the number 1 hit "Are 'Friends' Electric?" and its parent album Replicas. Musically the new song was somewhat lighter and more pop-orientated than its predecessors, Numan later conceding that he had chart success in mind: "This was the first time I had written a song with the intention of 'maybe it could be a hit single'; I was writing this before "Are 'Friends' Electric?" happened".^{[#endnote_RecordCollector]}

"Cars" is based on two musical sections: a verse/instrumental break, and a bridge. The recording features a conventional rock rhythm section of bass guitar and drums, however the rest of the instruments used are synthesizers, principly the Minimoog (augmenting the song's recognisable bass riff) and the Polymoog Keyboard, providing austere synthetic string lines over the bass riff. The bridge section also includes a tambourine part. Numan's vocal part is sung in an almost expressionless, robotic style. There is no 'chorus' as such.

According to Numan, the song's lyrics were inspired by an incident of road rage: "I was in traffic in London once and had a problem with some people in front. They tried to beat me up and get me out of the car. I locked the doors and eventually drove up on the pavement and got away from them. It's kind of to do with that. It explains how you can feel safe inside a car in the modern world... When you're in it, your whole mentality is different... It's like your own little personal empire with four wheels on it."^{[#endnote_KAOS2000]}

The original UK single B-side was a non-album instrumental track called "Asylum". The US B-side was "Metal", from The Pleasure Principle album. The music video featured Numan's then-current backing band, including Billy Currie from the band Ultravox, though he had not actually played on the recording of "Cars". Towards the end of the video, a multitude of Gary Numans are depicted 'driving' along a Polymoog keyboard.

"Cars" has been a UK Top Twenty hit for Numan in three successive decades: on its original release in 1979 (making number 1), in a 1987 release as the 'E Reg Model' remix (number 16), and again in 1996 following its use in an advertisement for Carling Premier beer (number 17).

Numan has regularly performed the song on stage from 1979 to the present day and it appears on all but one of his official live albums to date; many remixed versions have also been released over the years (see Live versions and remixes). "Cars" was covered by the Judybats on the 1991 single "Daylight" and by Shampoo on the "Girl Power" single in 1995. Dave Clarke performed the song on the Random tribute album in 1997, while Fear Factory released a 'hard rock' version in 1999, with guest vocals provided by Numan. The song was also heavily sampled in the 2000 song "Koochy" by Armand van Helden, which reached number 4 in the UK Singles Chart.

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Contents

1 Track listing
2 Production credits
3 Live versions and remixes
4 Pop culture occurrences
5 Notes
6 References
7 See also

Track listing

"Cars" (Numan) - 3:44
"Asylum" (Numan) - 2:30

Production credits

Producer:
* Gary Numan

Musicians:
* Gary Numan: Vocals, Keyboards (Minimoog, Polymoog), Synthetic percussion
* Paul Gardiner: Bass guitar
* Chris Payne: Keyboards (Minimoog, Polymoog)
* Cedric Sharpley: Drums, Tambourine

Live versions and remixes

A selected list of official live recordings and remixes.

Living Ornaments '79 (1981) - live recording
White Noise (1985) - live recording also released on "The Live EP"
"Cars (E Reg Model)" (1987) - remix released as 7"/12" single (including two other 1987 mixes) and on compilation album Exhibition
Ghost (1987) - live recording
"The Peel Sessions Volume 2" (1987) - 1979 live-in-studio recording for John Peel's BBC Radio 1 show released as EP
The Skin Mechanic (1989) - live recording
"Cars ('93 Sprint)" (1993) - remix released as EP (including two 1987 mixes and three other 1993 mixes) and on compilation album The Best of Gary Numan 1978-1983
Dream Corrosion (1994) - live recording
"Cars (Premier Mix)" (1996) - reissued/rebadged 1987 remix released as single and on compilation album The Premier Hits
Living Ornaments '81 (1998) - live recording
The Mix (1998) - three different remixes
Scarred (2002) - live recording
Hybrid (2003) - remix
Live at Shepherd's Bush Empire (2004) - live recording
Living Ornaments '80 (2005) - reissued/expanded live recording originally released minus "Cars" in 1981

Pop culture occurrences

[Howard Moon], [Vince Noir], and the Hairy Russian Carpet Guy, all sing along to the hit in The Mighty Boosh
Was in the movie Freddy got Fingered along with Fear Factory's cover
Was in the video game
Was in the video game Test Drive 6, also musical video by Fear Factory was accessible in the options menu for this game
Parody performed by Homer Simpson in The Simpsons episode "Diatribe of a Mad Housewife"
Its music video was used in Beavis and Butthead
Has been used in several episodes of the television drama Nip/Tuck
Some of the instrumental parts were used in a commercial for ESPN football
Has appeared in advertisements for American Express, Carling beer, Little Debbie,Oldsmobile and Nissan

Notes

↑
↑ [KAOS2000 Magazine interview]

References

Paul Goodwin (2004). Electric Pioneer: An Armchair Guide To Gary Numan