Cars- Shake It Up 40th anniversary- Greg Hawkes, the late Ric Ocasek
Contrary to the checkered flag cover art on The Cars‘ 1980 album Panorama , for that third lap the band had finished back in the pack as compared to the winners circle finishes of the first two, 1978’s multi-platinum debut The Cars and the high octane follow-up Candy O. Their last to be produced by English veteran Roy Thomas Baker, Shake It Up was their first album to contain a Top Ten Billboard hit in the title song, so 1981’s Shake It Up, with its peak at #9 on Billboard album sales chart as well as #34 for the entire year, was seen by many as a return to high performance by the Boston band.
A decade before film director John Singleton introduced mainstream America to Boyz in the ‘Hood , writing on Pitchfork.com Alfred Soto notes,”…singer/songwriter Ric Ocasek wrote hooky songs about girls on hoods: dumb but not stupid, sexist but not offensive…In that pre-MTV era, The Cars were an ideal first vehicle.”