The Cars Greatest Hits

by

The Cars

Edit

The Cars had kind of two personalities over their career: the pop hits like "Drive" and "Shake it Up" and the album tracks that classic rock radio still plays like "Moving in Stereo" and "You're All I've Got Tonight". This album is great if you ONLY want the pop material...all the Top 40 hits are here...but if you like any of their best album material at all, you'll be much better off with the CD "Complete Greatest Hits" (ASIN B00005Y1XY) which sacrifices only lesser track "Heartbeat City" from this one and then adds on several great tracks you don't get here:

"Bye Bye Love", "You're all I've Got Tonight" and "Moving in Stereo" from the debut, CANDY-O's "Dangerous Type" and "It's All I Can Do",HEARTBEAT CITY's "Hello Again" (and "Why Can't I Have You?" if you happen to like that one..I consider it a lesser effort), and even a track from the farewell album DOOR TO DOOR ("You are the Girl").

If such things matter to you, they also come in chronological order (though those prone to whining about it could always program their CD player or burn a copy for the car in the "correct" order).

BOTTOM LINE:

If you like the Cars, this one doesn't serve them as well for a single disc compilation as "Complete Greatest Hits" does. Get that one instead.

I only give this album two stars because it is now obsolete and should be deleted from the band's back catalog. There have been two better compilations released since this one came along in 1985 - "Just What I Needed - The Cars Anthology" and "The Cars Complete Greatest Hits" (even the title of that one seems to be a dig at this disc's anemic track listing).... "Complete Greatest Hits" is available on Amazon.com for quite a bit less than this one and includes 8 more songs!

The songs on this one are pretty much the cream of the Cars' crop through 1985, but as is usually the case you always complain about what's not here as opposed to what is. "Bye-Bye Love", "Moving In Stereo", "You're All I've Got Tonight", "Candy-O", "It's All I Can Do", "Dangerous Type", "Gimme Some Slack", "Don't Tell Me No", "Hello Again", and "Why Can't I Have You" are not included here. Also of course, hits from "Door To Door" ("You Are The Girl", "Coming Up You", "Strap Me In") are not included since that album came out two years after "Greatest Hits".

Plus, the title track from "Heartbeat City" IS on here. Truly the lamest track from that disc, and inexplicably one of the 3 or 4 they did at Live Aid, this tune must really have some deep meaning to the band for it to be here instead of any of the tunes I mentioned earlier. It wasn't a hit, wasn't heard on the radio with any regularlity to my knowledge, and is a pretty weak song to boot.

I bought this album on cassette the day it came out in 1985, because it was the best you could do for Cars hits at that point. I have since bought both "Just What I Needed" (which includes all of the tunes I mentioned except "Bye-Bye Love" and "Coming Up You") and "Complete Greatest Hits" (which does include "Bye Bye Love" and most of the other songs I mentioned). Don't waste time on this one, check out one of those other two and see which fits you best.