On the Cars song Drive Benjamin Orr sounds mysterious, sad and all-too-knowing. Though Rick Ocasek is the name and face we usually put behind the wheel, I can't imagine anyone but Orr singing this track. It's probably one of the eeriest love songs (besides The Police's Every Breath You Take) to come out of the 80s and it's also one of the best (I think.)
Drive was the Cars' highest charting song in the United States. It was released in the summer of 1984 off their Heartbeat City album, but was still playing on the radio a lot when I started high school that fall. For the longest time I associated it with everything that was weird, wonderful and upsetting about freshman year, but now I think of it as something else entirely.
It's not a sweet love song, it's not sugary or silly or cheesy...it's just brutally honest and yet...Rick Ocasek (who wrote it) talks of a love that never forgets and even as it has a bitter undertone, it's also about someone who still cares about the person who cast his love aside...
Of course, that's just my take...I may be reading too much into it. Besides, like any good song it's best to just let the sounds wash over you. 'Cause sometimes the whole reason we listen to music is so we can just be.
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