Do I need to listen to The Cars' Heartbeat City?

Last week, Mary Beth and I went on a staycation. I guess you can't really "go" on a staycation, but it feels weird to say we "stayed" on a staycation. In any event, we both needed a reset, but when you have two horses, two cats and a dog, going away for an extended period of time isn't usually feasible.

That meant that I did no work on You, Me and An Album for a week. I don't think I had done that since I started the podcast in 2020. Actually, I did do one small thing, which was to publish an episode that had only resided on the YMAAA Patreon. It was my conversation with Munich-based soul-pop artist Caro Kelley about her 1000 Albums project. Caro started the project when she sustained a vocal injury and had to put the recording of her latest album, QUIET, on hold. Since she couldn't work, she decided to listen to three new-to-her albums a day and rate them. If you take a look at her log of albums, she has surpassed 1000 albums and is now over 1600.

I picked a dozen of those albums to discuss to learn more about how she arrived at her ratings, and we wound up talking about seven of them. The only one of those seven I had never actually listened to was The Cars' 1984 album Heartbeat City. I disliked the album's five radio hits so much that I had absolutely no interest in hearing the whole album. As a huge fan of The Cars' first two albums and most of their previous singles, those hits were highly disappointing.

I've had a hard time pinpointing what it is exactly that I don't like about the half of Heartbeat City I have heard. The more I think about it, the more I realize that it's the songs' relative lack of quirkiness that puts me off. The Cars always had a great pop sensibility, but their earlier work also had a little bit of edge.

For those who know the whole album, am I judging it unfairly based on the half of the album that got the most airplay? Is it worth the 39 minutes required to give it a real chance?

What else is new, what's to come and a recommendation

Before going on staycation, I put out a couple of episodes I was very eager for you to hear. Peter Case made a return visit to the show to introduce me to Fred Neil's 1968 album Sessions. (Peter made an earlier appearance to talk about Bob Dylan's self-titled debut.) I also published an episode with electronic music pioneer and Stevie Wonder collaborator Robert Margouleff. Robert came to chat about David Sanborn's As We Speak, but we also talked plenty about his early-to-mid '70s four-album run as associate producer for Wonder.

On the next couple of upcoming episodes, YMAAA gets a little punky. Former Black Flag bassist Kira Roessler joins me to talk about Bright Eyes' Digital Ash in a Digital Urn, and then I'll have an episode with one-time Sonic Youth drummer Bob Bert, where we'll discuss the No New York no wave compilation.

Lastly, be sure to check out the latest release from Kendall Jane Meade, who was my guest on YMAAA a little over a year ago to discuss Joni Mitchell's Court and Spark. "Temporary" is one of my favorite tracks from her album Space, but I love her remixed version of it just as much. As I mentioned in my interview with Robert Margouleff, I'm listening to a lot more dance music lately, and Kendall's remix belongs on any summer dance playlist.