CoronaVinyl Day 73 (New Wave): Candy-O by The Cars

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Today's CoronaVinyl category is new wave, which is kind of an amorphous genre that has various subgenres.  It started out in the late '70s as tied to punk, but then morphed into synth pop, and sometimes I feel like it can be a label applied to pretty much any pop song from 1978 to 1989 with synthesizers -- which is to say, pretty much every pop song during that time period -- but I think it encompasses much more than that.  Some artists were pretty much all new wave, while some dabbled in new wave while primarily dealing in other genres (whether harder or softer).  It's kind of like Justice Potter Stewart's famous quote about obscenity:  I know it when I see it. 

I do know that The Cars were one of the biggest new wave bands, so at least my choice for today's selection was relatively easy.  I'm going with The Cars' second studio album, 1979's Candy-O, with its album cover by famed pin-up artist Alberto Vargas (who was then 83 years old).  The model was coincidentally named Candy Moore, and she had actually played Lucy's daughter on the I Love Lucy spinoff The Lucy Show.

While the band's self-titled debut album from 1978 could hardly have been considered a failure -- as it spawned two Top 40 hits in the U.S. ("Just What I Needed" (#27) and "My Best Friend's Girl" (#35) and a near miss ("Good Times Roll" (#41)) and has since gone 6x platinum in the U.S. -- Candy-O was the band's first Top 5 album (or Top 10, for that matter) on the Billboard album charts, reaching #3.  It also produced the band's first Top 20 hit on the Billboard Hot 100, "Let's Go," which hit #14.  "It's All I Can Do" was another near miss, reaching #41.  Candy-O was the first of four consecutive Top 10 and either platinum- or multi-platinum-selling albums for the band in the U.S.

The album is a great example of early new wave, with its catchy, tight pop rock, complemented by synthesizers and the dual lead vocals of rhythm guitarist (and songwriter) Ric Ocasek and bassist Benjamin Orr.  It touches you in all the right places, but not in a weird way.

Favorite song from Side 1:  "Let's Go"
The first track on the album is the aforementioned "Let's Go," and there's good reason it was the band's first Top 15 song.  It's catchy song, sung from the perspective of a guy who feels like he's not quite good enough for his ladyfriend.  But she likes the nightlife, baby, so she says, "let's go."  And then we all clap along.

Favorite song from Side 2:  "Got a Lot on My Head"
"Got a Lot on My Head" is a faster-paced song that, at the same time, has some great rock guitars and video-game-like synthesizers -- certainly a harbinger of what was to come in the '80s.