Elliot Easton

Stop what you're doing and go put on The Cars' eponymous album from 1978. Just go do it. You can read this while you listen.

But don't just let it pass over your brain the way songs you've heard a million times (and you've heard almost every song on this album at least that many times) tend to. Really listen.

Notice how impossibly lush, yet remarkably raw everything is. The way each track feels poppy and simple but has these little moments of incredibly complex architecture. How the music mimics an earworm but actually constricts you like a boa.

Imagine organizing an album and being so stuffed with hits that you decide an all-timer like Bye Bye Love is actually the seventh best thing you've done. Yes, that's not actually how albums are put together, but still. It's a B-side, for crying out loud!

(Kids, back in the day music came on giant discs called records and to listen to the whole thing you had to turn it over, halfway through. Thus, you hid all the weak stuff on the back side.)

And, to be clear, The Cars isn't some greatest hits album either. It's actually the first one The Cars (Ric Ocsek, Benjamin Orr, Greg Hawkes, David Robinson, and, yes, Jew, Elliot Easton) ever did. And every track just hums — even today it feels modern; unique. Think about the level of talent, of effort, of total dedication that kind of accomplishment requires.

G-d DAMN!