Drive (song)

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Chart positions
Explanation of the data
Singles
Drive
  DE 4th 10/22/1984 (17 weeks)
  AT 8th 11/15/1984 (10 weeks)
  CH 3 11/11/1984 (12 weeks)
  UK 4th 09/29/1984 (9 weeks)
  US 3 08/04/1984 (19 weeks)

Drive is a song by the American band The Cars from 1984. It appeared on the album Heartbeat City .

history

The title was written by Ric Ocasek and produced in cooperation with Robert Lange . The lead vocals are from Benjamin Orr , the band's bassist. Drive is one of the few Cars pieces (alongside Just What I Needed ) that were not interpreted by Ocasek.

Drive was released as a single worldwide on July 23, 1984. The 7 "version had the title Stranger Eyes on the B-side (in the USA, however, the track Hello Again ), the 12" maxi also had the song My Best Friend's Girl . The single reached the top 10 of the charts in many countries (including number 1 in the US Billboard Hot Adult Contemporary Charts ) and thus became the most successful hit in the band's history.

In 1985 the group played Live Aid at the benefit concert . Drive served as background music for pictures shown of starving children in Africa ; the band's performance was not shown on television.

Music video

Timothy Hutton directed the film . Benjamin Orr and Ric Ocasek and the Czech model Paulina Porizkova play the leading roles in the video ; the other band members appear only as robots or wax figures. Part of the clip takes place in an initially run-down bar. While Orr is performing the song, the bar is increasingly filling with - artificial - life. At the end, the complete band can be seen here in the form of wax figures. The scenes with Porizkova and Ocasek were shot in an almost empty room in which both protagonists sit or stand opposite one another. There is initially a spatial and emotional distance between them (they observe each other in silence), but then it escalates in the form of a clearly recognizable argument. Individual shots by Porizkova show the model portraying various emotional states (apathetic, desperate, amused, etc.).

The individual actions, characters and rooms allow different interpretations:

The most common variant is the treatment of a broken relationship from different perspectives: Orr's part would therefore represent the situation of the person whose point of view the song describes. After being abandoned, he feels completely lonely. Life slowly begins to grow around him again, but it seems strange and unreal to him. The scenery with Porizkova could therefore thematize the processing by the other, in this case the female side. Her sudden changes of feeling (crying - laughing - crying) appear; the empty space could also symbolize her loneliness, which now also surrounds her. In the encounter with Ocasek, she loses her initial security and is visibly dissolved and desperate in the subsequent verbal argument. This could be interpreted as an indication that she regrets the separation and breaks up mentally because of the refusal of her counterpart.

The individual shots of Porizkova in particular allow another conclusion, namely the embodiment of a mentally ill or even mentally impaired person. This is supported by the emotional fluctuations shown (comparable to a borderline illness ) and a scene in which the protagonist sits in front of a bare wall, which she paints on her back with an implied smile. This would be underlined by Porizkova's outfit (nightgown as a symbol of "mental derangement"); The headline “Who's gonna drive you home tonight?” could also be interpreted accordingly.

Trivia

Ocasek and Porizkova, who met while filming the video, were married from 1989 to 2017.

Cover versions

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Charts DE Charts AT Charts CH Charts UK Charts US
  2. ↑ Drive by The Cars at Songfacts.com (English), accessed August 25, 2019.
  3. ↑ release date
  4. ↑ Discogs.com
  5. ^ Joel Whitburn Top Adult Contemporary: 1961-2001. Record Research. P. 49, 2002
  6. ↑ http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/witness/july/13/newsid_3041000/3041494.stm
  7. ↑ Archive link ( Memento of the original from January 8, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.mojo4music.com
  8. ↑ Archive link ( Memento of the original from April 24, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.tnt.tv
  9. ↑ http://www.laut.de/Scorpions/Drive
  10. ↑ http://www.discogs.com/Various-50-First-Dates-Original-Motion-Picture-Soundtrack/release/2042813
  11. ^ Jason Donovan Drive cover from The Cars Drive on WhoSampled.com