Here is Gary Numan recently performing his hit single CARS with an
actual orchestra of CARS. Filmed for DieHard Battery
Video below
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"Cars" is a 1979 pop music song by UK artist Gary Numan, and
was released as a single from the album The Pleasure Principle. It
reached the top of the charts in several countries, and today is
considered a New Wave staple. In the UK charts, it reached Number 1
in 1979, and rose to Number 9 on the U.S. Billboard charts, in 1980.
This hit single debuted on the American Top 40 on March 29, 1980, and
spent a total of 17 weeks in the AT40. "Cars" was released
under the 'Atco' label, with the catalog number of 7211.
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 one 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 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".[1]
"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, although
the rest of the instruments used are analog synthesizers, principally
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."[2]
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