The Cars

The Cars were an American rock band formed in Boston in 1976. Emerging from the new wave scene in the late 1970s, they consisted of Ric Ocasek (rhythm guitar), Benjamin Orr (bass guitar), Elliot Easton (lead guitar), Greg Hawkes (keyboards) and David Robinson (drums). Ocasek and Orr shared lead vocals. Ocasek was the band's leader and took sole songwriting credits for practically every song, leading to friction in the band later. The Cars were at the forefront of the merger of 1970s guitar-orientated rock with the new synthesizer-oriented pop that became popular in the early 1980s. Music critic Robert Palmer of The New York Times and Rolling Stone wrote that the band "...have taken some important but disparate contemporary trends - punk minimalism, the labyrinthine synthesizer and guitar textures of art rock, the '50s rockabilly revival and the melodious terseness of power pop - and mixed them into a personal and appealing blend". In 1978, the Cars were named Best New Artist in a readers' poll conducted by Rolling Stone. The band's 1978 debut album, The Cars, sold six million copies and appeared on the Billboard 200 album chart for 139 weeks. The Cars had four Top 10 hits: "Shake It...