Bleachers – “Drive” (The Cars Cover)

Bleachers – “Drive” (The Cars Cover)

The Cars’ 1984 ballad “Drive” isn’t the band’s best-remembered song, but in its day, it was their biggest hit. The Cars recorded the track with producer Mutt Lange, who’d already conquered the world with AC/DC and Def Leppard. Timothy Hutton directed the song’s video, which starred the supermodel Paulina Porizkova, who would later marry Cars leader Ric Ocasek. The song peaked at #3 on the Hot 100, one spot higher than the Cars’ second-biggest hit “Shake It Up.” It’s a pretty good song that represents a great band at its commercial peak.

Today, we get to hear what Jack Antonoff does with “Drive.” Antonoff and his band Bleachers have just shared the new Spotify-only EP Live At Electric Lady, which features live-in-studio versions of a bunch of songs from the band’s recent album Take The Sadness Out Of Saturday Night. Some of Antonoff’s famous friends came through to help out on the EP. Bruce Springsteen sings on the live version of “Chinatown,” which the band recorded on the Electric Lady rooftop, and the EP also features the version of “What’d I Do With All This Faith?” that Bleachers and St. Vincent played on the studio roof.

The opening track of Live At Electric Lady is Bleachers’ take on “Drive.” Antonoff and his band have gone for a kind of dreamy take on the Cars’ song, with a whole lot of reverb and some serious string-section action. It almost sounds like they’re going for a bit of a War On Drugs thing. Below, stream the Cars cover and the rest of the Live At Electric Lady EP.

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