“Drive” by The Cars

"Drive" was the third single from the Cars' Heartbeat City, issued in July 1984, and while Ric Ocasek wrote it, he handed the microphone to bassist Benjamin Orr, whose cool, hurt croon floats over Greg Hawkes's keyboards like fog over a parking lot. Mutt Lange produced it with the band, Nigel Green recorded it and Mike Shipley mixed it, and every edge is buffed to a soft glow. It became the band's highest-charting single in most places, climbing to number three on the Billboard Hot 100 and topping the Adult Contemporary chart.

Then Live Aid gave it a second life. The Cars played it at the Philadelphia show in July 1985, while in London it scored a CBC film of the Ethiopian famine, introduced by David Bowie. That sent it back up the UK chart, and the reissue raised nearly 160,000 pounds for the Band Aid Trust; Ocasek handed the cheque to Midge Ure in London in November 1986.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.