Cars

This song is about how people use technology and material goods to isolate themselves from human contact. Numan has stated that he has Asperger syndrome, which is a mild form of autism, but until he was diagnosed, he had a lot of trouble relating to other people.

Numan told Mojo magazine March 2008 about the original inspiration for this song: "A couple of blokes started peering in the window and for whatever reason took a dislike to me, so I had to take evasive action. I swerved up the pavement, scattering pedestrians everywhere. After that, I began to see the car as the tank of modern society."

This was Numan's only hit in the US, but he has had many others in England, where he has a large cult following. Numan specializes in electronic music, and was an influence on artists like Marilyn Manson and Nine Inch Nails. So does the one hit wonder tag bother him? In a 2010 Songfacts interview with Gary Numan, he said: "In a way it does. But you have to be realistic; better to have had one than none. On the other hand, it gives you that drive to keep on going, I suppose. I don't know, I mean, if even that's true. Because I do it because I love it. I think if having hit singles and that level of success is your reason for making music in the first place, then I would find that situation very frustrating if I only had one hit. But the truth is, I do it almost as a hobby. I've just been lucky that I've been able to earn a living from it for such a long time. Because if I didn't earn a living from it, I would still make exactly the same records, and write exactly the same songs. If an album goes out and it doesn't sell in large numbers, or in America it doesn't sell at all (laughs), I'm not devastated by that. I'm not sitting back thinking it's all a waste of time, because I just enjoyed making it in the first place. And luckily for me there's been other countries - the UK obviously - where things have gone differently and much better. And it's enabled me to keep on doing it, to keep on earning a living from it. So there is a mix of frustration, because it's an amazing country to be successful in. On the other hand, I don't feel as if my life has been diminished by not having an ongoing success there."