You Might Think: The Cars’ Heartbeat City Turns 40
Inside the Mutt Lange-produced powerhouse that brought the Boston band MTV glory
Maybe 1984 was such an amazing year for blockbuster albums because MTV was ascending its influence.
Big names were delivering big videos that had big impacts on sales and success. For example:
“When Doves Cry” from Prince’s staggeringly popular Purple Rain, became a worldwide hit as MTV music executives fretted about the sexuality it portrayed. Adding to their fretting was the video of the title track from Like A Virgin, Madonna’s first number-one song in the U.S.
Meanwhile, “What’s Love Got to Do With It,” Tina Turner’s first and only number-one U.S. hit, helped propel Private Dancer to one of the best-selling albums in history. And do we really have to mention Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the U.S.A.?
Then there was that damn bug.
That flying critter with Ric Ocasek’s face on it was perhaps the most memorable aspect of the video for The Cars’ “You Might Think,” which was nominated for six MTV Video Music Awards, winning the first-ever award for Video of the Year. One of the first videos to incorporate computer graphics, it also won five awards at Billboard’s 1984 Video Music Awards: Best Video, Best Conceptual, Most Innovative, Best Editing and Best Special Effects.
VIDEO: The Cars “You Might Think”
It was a great tune, too. Reminiscent of the poppy New Wave of the band’s self-titled 1978 debut, “You Might Think” filters the sound of hits like “My Best Friend’s Girl,” “Good Times Roll” and “Just What I Needed” through the formidable production skills of Robert John “Mutt” Lange to deliver a glossier version of The Cars.
Lange replaced the similarly formidable Roy Thomas Baker, who took the controls of that superb debut album and went on to guide the band through three more releases. While 1979’s Candy-O was a big success, 1980’s Panorama and 1981’s Shake It Up sold well enough, but felt like the band was simply continuing to mine a signature sound for an audience that was starting to move on. Change was needed.
Enter Lange, who set aside producing Def Leppard’s Pyromania to focus on The Cars’ fifth studio release. Heartbeat City was seen as a triumphant return to form for the band, embracing its new wave roots while showing growth in other directions.
The best example of the latter: “Drive,” which would become the band’s biggest hit of all time. It’s one of those songs, like Thin Lizzy’s “Still in Love with You” or “Beth” by KISS, where your ears do a double take and you ask yourself, “wait, WHAT band is this?” It’s a song far more at home on Sirius XM’s The Bridge rather than 1st Wave.
VIDEO: The Cars “Drive”
Written by Ocasek and sung by bassist Benjamin Orr, who performed it at the Philadelphia portion of 1985’s Live Aid, “Drive” benefits greatly from Lange’s smooth perfectionism. The video features 19-year-old model and actress Paulina Porizkova, who would become Ric Ocasek’s third wife on August 23, 1989. (They stayed together until his death in September 2019, though they were in the process of divorcing at the time he died.)
As the liner notes from the 1995 compilation, Just What I Needed: The Cars Anthology explained: “Lange coproduced with the band, making Roy Thomas Baker’s mega-productions sound like garage tapes in comparison. Everybody got their hands on a synth or sequencer; many of the instruments (including all of David Robinson’s drum parts) were programmed rather than played. [Heartbeat City] took eight months to complete, and it wasn’t unusual for the band to spend a full day in the studio and come home with 30 seconds of finished tape. Even the simpler tracks were filled with details, and listeners can rest assured that every one of those multilayered guitar, vocal and keyboard parts was produced through hours of studio effort.”
The title track, which closes the record and was released as the album’s sixth single, is a terrific example of that lush detail. It opens with a soft thunder, hints of a chilly late-night wind, squiggles of synth, all leading to an irresistible beat that supports an impressionistic lyric that could be about a girl, a city or even death. Yes, death: “Jacki,” the original title of the song (it appears that way on early pressings of the album), can be seen as the jackal-headed Egyptian god of the dead, Anubis.
The album’s leadoff song, “Hello Again,” is another terrific example: punchy staccato synth lines, a tasty talk box guitar hook, sonic accents dropped in here, there and everywhere. It tells listeners dropping the needle on side one that yes, this is The Cars you loved so much in 1978, but it’s a version of The Cars souped up for mid-1980s ears.
Despite an odd video that has Ocasek walking on water (never let it be said that rock stars have self-image issues), “Magic” is another standout track tailor-made for mid-‘80s radio airplay. “(Uh oh, it’s magic) / When I’m with you / (Uh oh, it’s magic) / Just a little magic / You know it’s true / I got a hold on you” – those lyrics aren’t going to make David Bowie or Elton John sweat the competition But damn, it sure sounds good blasting in the car on a sunny day with the windows open or, ideally, the top down.
VIDEO: The Cars “Magic”
The opening of “Looking for Love” finds Ocasek channeling a certain type of Van Morrison vocal style (the song would make a great sequeway from Morrison’s “In the Days Before Rock ‘n’ Roll”) calling back to “My Best Friend’s Girl” with its “here she comes” choral refrain.
“It’s Not the Night” was never released as a single, but it probably should have been: It has pretty strong Journey vibes, which undoubtedly helped it reach #31 on the U.S. chart.
Yep, 1984 really was an excellent year in music, not just music videos, and The Cars were a big part of that. Your ears will have no trouble figuring out why when you go back and give Heartbeat City a listen. It may not feel as new wavey as their debut, but there isn’t a clunker among its 10 tracks.
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