The Cars' Ric Ocasek Was a Master Songwriter. These Are His Best Tracks.

In his speech inducting The Cars into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2018, Brandon Flowers of the Killers described the band as “a slick machine with a 340 V8 under the hood that ran on synergy, experimentation and a redefined cool. They had it all: the looks, the hooks, Beat romance lyrics, killer choruses.” It's a perfect description of the band, lead by the tight songwriting and emotive vocals of Ric Ocasek, who died on Sunday at the age of 75. With his careful songcraft, Ocasek managed to merge New Wave and mainstream rock into a sound that devoured the charts, with four top 10 hits between 1982 and 1986.

From their 1978 self-titled debut album to their initial break-up after 1987's Door to Door (they later reunited for a 2011 album), The Cars were the most reliably dominant sound in pop and rock music. That's largely thanks to Ocasek's otherworldly ability to write a hook. "I’m happy that the pop songs have a bit of a twist. When I’m writing, I never know how it’s going to come out," Ocasek told The New York Times in 1987. "I don’t think, well, I’ve done a catchy one, now I can do a weird one. I read a lot of poetry, and that gives me a wide range of permission to say anything in a song—they’re more twisted than I’ll ever be.”

Below, we run down Ocasek's 10 most essential songs, most of which are with The Cars, and one from his solo output.