The Cars were a popular American New Wave band that emerged out of the early punk scene in the late 1970s. They hailed from Boston, Massachusetts and were signed to Elektra Records in 1977 ( 1977 in music).
The Cars successfully bridged the styles of 1970's guitar-oriented rock and the synth-oriented pop of the early 1980s. While most of the singles included an Elliot Easton guitar solo, The Cars' sound was defined much more by Greg Hawkes' synthesizers and the huge harmonies of Easton, David Robinson (musician), and Hawkes behind Benjamin Orr's and Ric Ocasek's lead vocals.
The band's hits dominated the charts for over nine years; their most successful albums were 1978's The Cars, which featured hit "Just What I Needed," and 1984's Heartbeat City, which included four Top 20 singles: "Magic," " Drive," "Hello Again," and "You Might Think," which also won the MTV Video Music Award for Video of the Year (see 1984 in music). "Drive" gained particular notability when it was used in a video of the Ethiopian famine prepared by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and introduced by David Bowie at the 1985 Live Aid concert at Wembley Stadium. Another extremely popular song from the Cars (but often not attributed to them) is " Moving in Stereo". It became infamous for its use during the Phoebe Cates pool scene in the 1982 movie Fast Times at Ridgemont High.
After the resulting period of superstardom and another hit single ("Tonight She Comes"), the Cars released their last album Door to Door in 1987, but it failed to approach the success of their previous albums. The Cars announced the group's break-up in February 1988 ( 1988 in music). In the late 1990s, rumors circulated of a Cars reunion, but Orr's death of pancreatic cancer on October 3, 2000 put an end to them for a time.