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(September 23, 2025 - Los Angeles, CA) Rhino celebrates the 40th anniversary of The Cars’ best-selling album on October 31 with Heartbeat City (Deluxe Edition).
The 4CD/1LP set includes the original quadruple-platinum album on both CD and LP. The remainder revisits the making of the album with unreleased studio recordings and early mixes, plus a complete 1984 concert from the band’s Heartbeat City tour. It’s accompanied by a color booklet filled with photos, new track-by-track notes by keyboardist Greg Hawkes, and an essay from drummer David Robinson, who designed all of the band’s album covers, including the sleeve for Heartbeat City. Pre-order here.
Heartbeat City (Deluxe Edition) highlights the album sessions with a demo for the Top 10 hit “Drive,” along with unreleased recordings of tracks like “Stranger Eyes” and “Jacki” (later renamed “Heartbeat City”). The set also includes multiple versions of “Shooting For You,” an outtake from the 1980s Panorama that was revived during the making of Heartbeat City.
The set also features a complete concert recorded at The Summit in Houston on September 11, 1984. Originally released on VHS and Laserdisc as The Cars – Live 1984-1985, the performance appears on CD for the first time here, expanded to include previously unreleased versions of “Candy-O” and “My Best Friend’s Girl.” The band opened the show with “Hello Again” and packed 17 songs into a 70-minute set that featured half the new album, including “You Might Think” and “Magic,” alongside earlier hits like “Good Times Roll” and “Let’s Go.”
In the liners, Hawkes recalls Ric Ocasek’s demo for “Drive” started out like a “spooky bossa nova with him sounding a little like Elvis.” By the time the band arrived in London to record, the song had evolved with Benjamin Orr taking over lead vocals. To conjure the track’s ethereal sound, Hawkes says the group spent days layering backing vocals while producer Robert John “Mutt” Lange urged, “Breathier, man, breathier!”
Robinson contributes his own essay, recalling a London gallery visit during the sessions where he discovered Art-O-Matic Loop di Loop, a painting by artist Peter Phillips that became the album’s cover. “I felt that the painting was a bold, bright, pop art counterpart to the sound of our new album. It even had a Vargas pin-up and a muscle car. Art-O-Matic Loop di Loop was just like something Ric would have made up.”
Released in March 1984, Heartbeat City was an instant hit, charting worldwide and peaking at #3 in the U.S., where it’s certified 4x platinum. The Cars’ biggest success, the album generated six singles over nearly two years, including “Magic,” “Hello Again,” and “Why Can’t I Have You.” The group secured its place in the MTV era when “You Might Think” won the network’s first Video of the Year award.
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