Cars (song)
"Cars" is the first solo single by English musician Gary Numan. It was released on 21 August 1979 and is from his debut studio album The Pleasure Principle. The song reached the top of the charts in several countries, and is Numan's most successful single.[4]
This article is about the 1979 Gary Numan song. For other uses, see Cars (disambiguation).
The song was the first release credited solely to Gary Numan after he dropped the band name Tubeway Army, under which he had released four singles and two LPs, including the number one UK hit "Are 'Friends' Electric?", and its parent album Replicas. Musically, the new song was somewhat lighter and more pop-oriented than its predecessors, Numan later said 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."[5] He has since described "Cars" as "a pretty average song".[6]
In the UK charts, it reached number 1 in 1979, and in 1980, it hit number 1 in Canada two weeks running on the RPM national singles chart[7][8] (29 weeks in the top 100), his only single to chart there. The single was first issued in the US in February 1980, where it peaked at #4 on the Cash Box Top 100 and #9 on the US Billboard Hot 100 on June 7, 1980, remaining at that position for three weeks.[9] Although Numan had a string of hits in the UK, "Cars" was his only song in the American pop charts.
Music video[edit]
The music video featured Numan's then-current backing band, including Billy Currie from the band Ultravox, but he had not played on the recording of "Cars". It is perhaps notable that the music video for "Cars" depicts no images of actual cars. At 2:43 in the video, five Gary Numans appear to be "driving" (in a standing position, holding an imaginary steering wheel) along a Polymoog keyboard.
Release[edit]
The original UK single was released in August 1979, backed with a non-album instrumental track called "Asylum". The US B-side was "Metal", from The Pleasure Principle The track has been a UK Top 20 hit for Numan in three successive decades: on its original release in 1979 (reaching number 1), in 1987 as the 'E Reg Model' remix (reaching number 16), and in 1996 following its use in an advertisement for Carling Premier beer (reaching number 17). Numan has performed the song onstage since its original release, and it appears on all but one of his official live albums to date.
A selected list of Numan's official live recordings and remixes.
Numan performed "Cars" using a set of two dozen automobiles and their horns in an innovative 2010 commercial for DieHard. All of the cars were powered from one single battery. James Frost of Zoo Films directed the video, and Synn Labs, which had previously worked with the band OK Go, engineered the cars.[23]
"Cars"
31 August 1999
Early 1998 in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
3:37
Gary Numan
Fear Factory, Rhys Fulber
Other appearances[edit]
In 2009, Chicane sampled "Cars" in "Hiding All the Stars",[37] which reached No. 42 in the UK and No. 23 in Belgium.
Toronto-based alternative rock quartet Sloan performed a version of the song in June 2011 for The A.V. Club's A.V. Undercover series.[38]