The 'Cars' hitmaker who kept building cold, anxious machines long after the charts moved on.
If you only know 'Cars', try 'I Dream Of Wires' next. It's the same cold pulse, just thirty years deeper into the wiring.
He gave electronic music its first proper pop hit with 'Cars' in 1979, a song so perfectly alien it still sounds like it's broadcasting from another planet. That synth riff became a blueprint, but he never stopped refining that anxious, metallic sound, later tracks like 'I Dream Of Wires' prove he was still tinkering with the machinery decades later. Artists from Trent Reznor to Depeche Mode have pointed to that icy, detached voice as a north star.
He started as Gary Webb, formed Tubeway Army, and accidentally made a global hit with 'Cars' off the 1979 album 'Replicas'. He followed it with 'The Pleasure Principle' and 'Telekon', then just kept releasing albums and touring with a band, playing electronic music even when it wasn't fashionable.
Keep it compact: a lyric you come back to, a live memory, or the part of the catalog you would point someone toward first.
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