“Touch and Go” by The Cars

"Touch and Go" comes off Panorama, the Cars' third album, in 1980, and it's the band at its most quietly devious. Ric Ocasek wrote and sang it, and he has said it's about a couple stuck in a rocky relationship, unsure why it keeps going wrong and putting up with the not-knowing anyway, and about how far you'll let things slide before you work out what you will and won't stand for.

The trick is in the rhythm. Through the verses the bass and drums count in five while the vocals, keyboards and guitar stay in four, so the song seems to limp and glide at once, an off-kilter syncopation one critic likened to reggae, before the chorus snaps everything back into plain four. Roy Thomas Baker produced it, and Elliot Easton's guitar solo drew raves from music journalist Bill Janovitz.

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