The Cars really could have used some more muscle. Some of the band’s best hooks are played so weakly that they don’t excite as much as they could. The riff on “You’re All I’ve Got Tonight” is so underplayed, for example, and yet it’s still the best song here.

The songwriting isn’t all that exemplary to begin with, anyway. For what’s often called one of the tightest collections of pop music, I’ve had yet to meet anyone who gives a damn about the brute-force fun of “Don’t Cha Stop” or the glorified postlude “All Mixed Up.”

Like all albums by The Cars, this is singles driven. It just so happens that the filler is slightly better than the filler on its successors. But that doesn’t mean anyone needs to hear it, or that there needs to be a canonical Cars album. Just stick to a “Greatest Hits” compilation and save some time. It is, in the end, the most complete record of why they were relevant in pop culture for a blink. Listening to this raises more questions than it answers.