The Cars

With this album, the Cars defined an entire subgenre of postpunk pop music: clicky rhythm guitars, tight harmonies, solid but very straight rhythms, and anhedonic vocals all combined to create a sound that was familiar enough in its component parts but quite new in its effect — like power pop with the power dialed way, way back. Until, of course, they hit “Just What I Needed,” which managed to be simultaneously powerfully anthemic and weirdly restrained. The fact that singer Benjamin Orr was able to deliver the line “when you’re standing oh so near” with a straight face in this context remains amazing. Song for song, this is one of the best albums of the 1980s — and it was actually made in 1978.

Containing one song that’s a bit weird if enjoyably quirky (“I’m in Touch With Your World”) and eight that all sound like they deserved to hit #1, this is maybe the closest to perfection that American new wave ever came. Youth angst, glam suaveness, and jittery romanticism made the Cars resemble a Roxy Music you could play at a 4th of July cookout. Hooks for eons.