Songoftheday 7/16/13 - and it's so hard to take there's no escape without a scrape, you kept it going till the sun fell down you kept it going,,,

The Cars - "You Might Think"
from the album Heartbeat City (1984)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #7 (three weeks)
Weeks in the Top-40: 11

Today's Song of the Day is by the Boston new wave band the Cars, who came together in the late 70s, and released their self-titled first album in 1978. That record, a landmark for the genre that's among Rolling Stones' top 500 albums of the rock era, scored the group a top-40 hit out of the box with "Just What I Needed", and a follow-up "My Best Friend's Girl" that was their biggest hit to date in the UK, going to #3. With their sophomore effort, Candy-O, they reached the top-20 with "Let's Go" in 1979. After a third album did moderately well, the band came back with the pop-friendly "Shake It Up", and the title track became a top-5 pop hit in 1982.

After touring behind the record, the band took a break while lead singer Ric Ocasek released a solo record. Regrouping in 1983, they recorded what would become their biggest album ever, Heartbeat City, which was released in the spring of 1984. The first single from the set, "You Might Think", was a radio-ready ditty in the nature of "Shake It Up" for the future, and the Ocasek-penned single was produced but Robert "Mutt" Lange with all his bells and whistles. A computer-enhanced video that was heralded as an amazing step forward in the form (though now seems quite quaint)...

"You Might Think" would not only bring the Cars back to the Top-10 (where they failed to even make the top-40 with follow-ups to "Shake It Up"), but also would top the Mainstream Rock radio chart, their first to do so. While the single also went top-10 in Canada, it relatively flopped in Britain, stalling at #88. It would be the first of five top-40 hits from the album (plus an extra top-40 rock hit) that made Heartbeat City one of the giant records of the first half of the decade, on a par with Thriller or Born In The USA.

The video would go on to win MTV's first "Video of the Year" award and the first award show in 1984.

(Click below to see the rest of the post)




In 2011, pop-punk heroes Weezer (kind of like a successor to the Cars) would remake "You Might Think" for the movie Cars 2...

 ...and here's the Cars themselves in concert in 1984..

Up tomorrow: A boy from the United States.