song of the day – “Why Can’t I Have You” | THE CARS | 1985.

The Apple LISA II Macintosh XL home computer, 1985.

On January 7, 1985, my almost 18-year-old self couldn’t even begin to fathom what life would be like 35 years later, as an almost 53-year-old, on January 7, 2020.  Blogging wasn’t a thing, MacBook Pros (like the one I’m typing on) didn’t exist (the Apple LISA II Macintosh XL home computer, released January 1, 1985, was a whopping $3,995 at the time of release), I had yet to become a radio DJ (that reality wouldn’t happen for another eight months), and I wasn’t one of the cool kids (far from it), and madly in love with my best friend (who I wouldn’t meet — and meeting through the wonders of community radio — for 21 years).

Me and Maryhope, WMPG-FM, Portland, Maine, 10.23.2019.

And, on January 7, 1985, I certainly wouldn’t have been thinking about The Cars’ then 40-year-old Ric Ocasek not being around anymore (Ric passed away at the age of 75 on September 15, 2019).  He’s surely missed, but I take comfort in the fact that the music of Ric and The Cars will drive up and down the radio dials forever.

January 7, 1985 was also the release date of “Why Can’t I Have You,” the fifth single from one of The Cars’ biggest and highest-charting albums ever, HEARTBEAT CITY.  Released in mid-March 1984 to much acclaim, HEARTBEAT CITY was certified Platinum in New Zealand and certified Gold in the U.K., sold four million copies in U.S. alone, reached No. 3 on BILLBOARD’s album chart, and was one of the 50 biggest albums in America for both 1984 and 1985.

Half of the gatefold artwork for the cover of HEARTBEAT CITY.

“Why Can’t I Have You” followed the singles “You Might Think,” “Magic,” “Drive” and “Hello Again,” all Top 20 singles on the BILLBOARD Hot 100.  If my nerdy singles chart math is correct, HEARTBEAT CITY was just the second album by a group (followed by the Huey Lewis & The News album, SPORTS) and just the fourth artist overall (following Michael Jackson, Lionel Richie, Huey Lewis & The News and Cyndi Lauper) to produce five Top 40 singles from one album.

The U.K. 12″ version of “Why Can’t I Have You.”

Entering the BILLBOARD Hot 100 about three weeks after its release, “Why Can’t I Have You” debuted on the chart at No. 79.  Five weeks later, in early March 1985, “Why Can’t I Have You” reached the Top 40 of the Hot 100, wedged in between the wonderful “This Is Not America” by David Bowie and Pat Metheny, and the (well, not so wonderful, but extremely popular) “Rhythm Of The Night” by DeBarge.

By the end of March 1985, “Why Can’t I Have You” spent a week at No. 33, fell out of the Top 40 a couple weeks later, and hung around the Hot 100 for a respectable 17 total weeks, ending its run in mid-May 1985, more than a year after the release of HEARTBEAT CITY.

NERDY HEARTBEAT CITY FUN FACT: The second song on the album, “Looking For Love” (written by Ric Ocasek and not a cover of the 1980 Johnny Lee hit from URBAN COWBOY), was actually covered later in 1985 by the pride of Austria, Falco, as “Munich Girls,” a German-language version of “Looking For Love.”  I never made the connection until researching for this blog post.  Holy cats!  I mean, Heilige Katzen!

NERDY HEARTBEAT CITY FUN FACT No. 2: For the cover art of the album, The Cars (having fun with their namesake) used a 1972 piece of artwork by English artist Peter Phillips called Art-O-Matic Loop di Loop, and features the 1971 Plymouth Duster 340.

The full gatefold cover art for HEARTBEAT CITY.

The Cars have so many incredible and infectious songs they’ll always be remembered for, so many still thankfully being played on the radio today, I don’t know if I could even put together a list of my 10 favorites, but I do know that if I could, “Why Can’t I Have You” would definitely be in that Top 10, if not the Top 5. 

In the 1984 ROLLING STONE review for HEARTBEAT CITY, writer Don Shewey wrote, “‘Why Can’t I Have You’ is easily the LP’s most affecting song, because Ocasek drops his usually chilly persona and, against a gorgeous whispered chorus, sings with plaintive desperation.”

The cover art for the Germany version of “Why Can’t I Have You.”

The only known cover of “Why Can’t I Have You” that I have ever heard is this stunning version by Brooklyn, NY Folk / Americana singer-songwriter-musician Kris Delmorst, who in 2011 put together a collective of singers and musicians from the Boston / Cambridge, Massachusetts area (including The Cars’ own keyboardist, Greg Hawkes) for her album of entirely Cars covers, appropriately titled, CARS.  Her version of “Why Can’t I Have You” is one of the best covers I’ve ever heard.

I think why I love “Why Can’t I Have You” so much is because it’s gorgeous, haunting, not quite like the rest of HEARTBEAT CITY, but yet still belonging to the essence of the overall feel of the album, and though it didn’t match the success the album’s other singles, I love how the band took a chance with this different, non-trad Cars Pop/Rock/Punk/New Wave offering, and still managed to reach the Top 40 anyway. 

And, as I blog about this 35 years later, I’m hoping a new generation of Cars fans will read this post and listen to “Why Can’t I Have You” and fall in love with song they’ve prolly never heard on the radio before, and if some members of this new generation of Cars fans are radio DJs, maybe they’ll end up loving the song as much as I do, and they’ll play this gorgeous treasure on the radio themselves…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YxGO23cI92U

 

song of the day – “You Are The Girl” | THE CARS | 1987.

On June 15, 2014, Casey Kasem, host of the longtime countdown program, AMERICAN TOP 40, passed away at the age of 82.  From my first blog post (and prolly some more inbetween then and now), I explained how, in 1979, I was a geeky, lanky and somewhat lost 12-year-old living in Central Maine, had a few friends and not a lot of interest in much of anything, but at some point early that year, I discovered AMERICAN TOP 40, and was glued to it every weekend.  Not only could I hear the 40 biggest songs in the country every week, but also Casey’s cool trivia and facts about the songs and the artists, a trait I treasure to this day.  For me, the show was No. 1 with a bullet.  And still is (thanks to the re-airing of broadcasts of AT40 on iHeart Radio).

In honor of my radio hero, Casey Kasem, for the entire month of June (and now through July), I will be highlighting a song each day (some days will have two songs!) that peaked in the Top 40 of the BILLBOARD Hot 100 (including five (real) one-hit wonders of the 80s), and with every blog post, just like on AMERICAN TOP 40, the hits will get bigger with each post.  On June 1, 2017, I featured a song that peaked at No. 40.  Sometime here in July, I’ll feature a “song of the day” that went all the way to No. 1. 

As Casey used to say on AT40, “And on we go!”

More than 40 songs climbed as high as No. 17 on the BILLBOARD Hot 100 between 1979 and 1989, again male-heavy selections, including two hits from Billy Joel, and two hits from Journey (plus, an additional No. 17 solo hit by Steve Perry, with Kenny Loggins – “Don’t Fight It”). 

I must really like songs that reached No. 17, because I’ve already written blog posts about six of them – “Ain’t Even Done With The Night” by John Mellencamp, “Beat’s So Lonely” by Charlie Sexton, “Days Gone Down” by Gerry Rafferty, “In A Big Country” by Big Country, “Living In A Box” by Living In A Box, and the wonderful Howard Jones with “You Know I Love You…Don’t You?”

The No. 17 rank is also one of just two from positions 40 through No. 1 that do NOT claim any of the more than 100 (real) one-hit wonders of the 80s that reached the Top 40 (the other is No. 6).

One of the later No. 17 hits from the 80s was the last Top 40 hit for The Cars – “You Are The Girl,” the first single from their sixth studio album, 1987’s DOOR TO DOOR.

Between the huge success of 1984’s HEARTBEAT CITY album and the release of DOOR TO DOOR, lead guitarist Elliot Easton and bassist and vocalist Benjamin Orr both released debut solo albums, and Ric Ocasek released his second solo album.  Plus, THE CARS’ GREATEST HITS was released, generating the Top 10 hit, “Tonight She Comes.”

Released in late August 1987, DOOR TO DOOR was intended to get the Boston band back into their original Rock roots (think back to their incredible 1978 self-titled debut album), free of drum machines and sampling that helped make the HEARTBEAT CITY album such a huge success. 

But, despite tension mounting within the (then) 11-year-old band, they pressed on and released DOOR TO DOOR.  The first single from the album, “You Are The Girl,” was written by both Ric Ocasek, who share vocals on the song with Benjamin Orr.  They hadn’t shared vocals on a Cars single since their second album, 1979’s CANDY-O, and the song “Since I Held You.”

Can’t help it – any excuse to post this album cover works for me.  It – and she – are gorgeous!

From the video for “You Are The Girl.”

“You Are The Girl” was the “Hot Shot Debut” on the BILLBOARD Hot 100 for the last week of August 1987, coming in at No. 65.  It reached the Top 40 just two weeks later, and looked like it was headed for Top 10 territory.  But, despite appearing on the 1987 MTV Video Music Awards, where this song was played, “You Are The Girl” spent a quick week at No. 17 in late October 1987, and was out of the Top 40 and headed down the Hot 100 in November 1987, which is around the time I saw The Cars perform in Portland, Maine, at the former Cumberland County Civic Center.

Icehouse, who opened for The Cars, put on a solid show, and I became a big fan.  The Cars put on an amazing show, but there was no interaction between the band members, and Ric Ocasek threw out the occasional, half-hearted “thank you” to those of us in attendance. 

It was weird to see a band kick ass on stage and yet see them so distant from each other.  Broke my heart.  The band hadn’t broken up at that point (I think they wanted to finish the tour first), but they might have well as been broken up.  And they did, a few months later, around my 21st birthday in February 1988.

Sure, there was talk of a Cars reunion in the 90s, and even Rhino Records helped out with their awesome 2-CD compilation, JUST WHAT I NEEDED: THE CARS ANTHOLOGY, plus other Rhino releases and reissues.  But, a proper reunion was not to be.  Benjamin Orr died of pancreatic cancer in 2000.

While Ric Ocasek continued with his solo career post-Y2K, in 2005, Cars stalwarts Elliot Easton and keyboardist Greg Hawkes teamed up with Rock legend Todd Rundgren and a couple other folks to form The New Cars, releasing a live album, IT’S ALIVE, containing a mix of Cars hits and Todd Rundgren hits, along with a new song, “Not Tonight,” which really did sound like it could have come from the late 70s or early 80s.  I actually had tickets to The New Cars when they came to Portland, Maine, but for whatever reason, I missed it.  Kinda wish I had been there though…

Hard to say, but maybe it was this spin-off of The Cars that inspired Ric Ocasek to reunite with the other surviving members of the band for a new album and tour in 2011: MOVE LIKE THIS.  With a long distance dedication in the liner notes to Benjamin Orr (“Ben, your spirit was with us on this one”), the band sounded as great as they had 24 years before, and as if they had been together the whole time.

Ben Orr and Ric Ocasek usually split up the vocals on albums, but with Ben gone, for MOVE LIKE THIS, Ric sang on all of the songs.  In an interview with ROLLING STONE about the reunion and the album, “I was aware that on half of the new songs, Ben would have done better than I did.  But we never wanted anybody from the outside.”

One cool thing they did for the album was not hire a bassist to replace Ben Orr.  Instead, any bass parts needed for the album were constructed and programmed by Greg Hawkes and MOVE LIKE THIS co-producer, Jacknife Lee, with Greg Hawkes playing a bass that had once belonged to Benjamin Orr.

A single from MOVE LIKE THIS, “Sad Song,” was well-received, sounded like The Cars of old, and reached No. 33 on BILLBOARD’s Rock Songs chart and No. 2 on BILLBOARD’s Triple A chart (it was heavily serviced to college and community radio stations).

The Cars finished up an 11-city mini-tour for MOVE LIKE THIS (appropriately enough) in Boston near the end of May 2011.  The band was nominated for induction into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame in 2015, and I hope they will get in one year.  So deserved. 

And though the band is technically still together, they haven’t recorded anything new or toured since MOVE LIKE THIS in 2011, though Ric Ocasek has overseen the remastering of The Cars’ discography on CD and vinyl.

The Cars have long been and remain as one of my all-time favorite bands, and their last Top 40 hit to date is definitely a keeper, even if the song was actually about an ex…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KGf-sszK-qw

song of the day – “Feet Don’t Fail Me Now” | UTOPIA | 1983.

To paraphrase from a movie I recently watched (yet again), the incredibly funny 1984 film, REVENGE OF THE NERDS, “I’m a singles chart nerd, and I’m pretty proud of it.” 

In the years leading up to adulthood, and for a few years after, I was a faithful listener of Casey Kasem’s AMERICAN TOP 40 program, and while I am a self-proclaimed singles chart nerd, I concede that, if there’s a song out there you love, and have loved for years, what position they reached on the singles chart (if they even reached it at all) doesn’t matter.  I think if Casey Kasem were here with us today, he might agree.  Still, all these years later, there are some songs out there whose peak chart positions surprise me.  One of those songs is “Feet Don’t Fail Me Now” by Utopia.

For years, Pennsylvania native Todd Rundgren had been going back and forth, releasing solo albums and albums with his band, Utopia.  As for his solo career, Todd is best known for his BILLBOARD Hot 100 hits, “I Saw The Light” (No. 16) and “Hello It’s Me” (No. 5, both from 1972), his original 1978 version of “Can We Still Be Friends” (No. 29; covered by Robert Palmer in 1979, and by many others since), and 1983’s fun “Bang The Drum All Day” (No. 63).

Todd Rundgren’s band, Utopia, started out as a Prog-Rock band in 1973, and had several incarnations over the years, releasing nine studio albums between 1974 and 1985.  Their biggest album, late 1979’s ADVENTURES IN UTOPIA, was their biggest, blending Rock, Disco and Prog-Rock, and gave the band their only Top 40 hit on the Hot 100, “Set Me Free,” which spent a week at its peak position of No. 27 in April 1980.

NERDY SIDE NOTE: A song Todd Rundgren wrote for Utopia’s 1977 album, OOPS!  WRONG PLANET – the last song on the album – called “Love Is The Answer,” was a single released from the album, but it was not a hit.  It did, however, end up being a Top 10 hit for Adult Contemporary favorites England Dan & John Ford Coley in May 1979, and it was among the 100 biggest U.S. hits of that year.

From Utopia’s second self-titled album (and their second album released in 1982), there were two singles released from the album: “Hammer In My Heart” and “Feet Don’t Fail Me Now.”  With the album recorded just a year after MTV was born, both songs featured videos on a VHS collection called THE UTOPIA SAMPLER, which received a Grammy nomination in 1983 for Best Short Form Video.  Speaking of MTV, footage for the “Hammer In My Heart” video was recorded live at MTV’s official first birthday party, hosted by MTV VJ (and current Maine resident and weather enthusiast), Nina Blackwood.  That song reached No. 31 on BILLBOARD’s Mainstream Rock chart.

The cheeky video for the other single released from the UTOPIA album, “Feet Don’t Fail Me Now,” featured the band members dressed up as different types of bugs who can’t move their feet.  The video kinda reminded me of videos The Cars would end up producing in the 80s, like 1984’s MTV Video Of The Year winner, “You Might Think” (which at one point features singer Ric Ocasek as a fly).  In an odd coincidence, Todd Rundgren took Ric Ocasek’s place as lead singer of The New Cars in 2005 (featuring original Cars members Elliot Easton and Greg Hawkes) for one album and a tour, which I unfortunately missed.

“Feet Don’t Fail Me Now” has always reminded me of a cross between the U.K. Pop band, Bucks Fizz (who had three No. 1 songs in the U.K. back in the early 80s) and XTC, which, in yet another coincidence, Todd Rundgren produced the brilliant XTC album, SKYLARKING, in 1986, the same year Utopia broke up.

On the BILLBOARD Hot 100, “Feet Don’t Fail Me Now” debuted at No. 90 in early January 1983, but sadly, it was the legs, not the feet that failed “Feet Don’t Fail Me Now,” and it peaked at No. 82 a couple weeks later, staying there for three weeks.  It was the last time Utopia would see the Hot 100.

I was a bit late learning about “Feet Don’t Fail Me Now” (it wasn’t until after I started STUCK IN THE 80s, my little 21-year 80s radio program on WMPG community radio in Portland, Maine), but every time I’ve heard it since, it’s never failed me.  I suppose maybe 20 years from now, if I hear this song and of course, want to dance to it, I might say, “Feet, don’t fail me now.” 

But, for the moment, I’ll proudly dance to this quirky and fun gem at home, because unlike the meaning of the word “utopia” (which means “no place” or an imagined place), here’s a good as place as any to dance, not to mention it’s a place where I don’t have to worry about taking anyone out on the dance floor on account of my mad dancing skillz (those who have seen me dance are laughing, because they know it’s true)…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ytAi9yr7t1E