"Since You're Gone" is a song by the American rock band the Cars. It was released as the second single from their fourth album, Shake It Up.
"Since You're Gone" is a power ballad about the breakup of a relationship. AllMusic critic Donald A. Guarisco praises the "inspired wordplay" of lyrics like "you're so treacherous/when it comes to tenderness" but also note the heartfelt quality of lyrics like "Since you're gone I never feel sedate/Since you're gone moonlight ain't so great." Music critic Jim Bohen describes the line "Since you're gone everything's in perfect tense" as an example of Ocasek's "literate wit." Boston Globe critic Steve Morse considers lines such as "since you're gone the nights are getting strange/since you're gone I'm throwing it all away/I can't help it everything's a mess" to be "trite." However, activist Phyllis Schlafly interprets some lines as encouraging suicide, where "life is not worth living after a loved one has gone."
The melody uses an unconventional style, but according to Guarisco the music "retains the emotional tone of the lyrics as it marries chant-like verses to a bridge built on ascending phrases that tug at the heart." According to the liner notes of Just What I Needed: The Cars Anthology, "Since You're Gone" is an example of "[a] more playful quality ... in Ocasek's writing", with a Bob Dylan impersonation where Morse states "...he apes Dylan's vocal phrasing." (e.g. the line: 'You're so treacher-ess!'). San Francisco Examiner contributor Michael Goldberg notes that despite the emotional theme of the song, Ocasek's vocal tone is detached, "almost as if he's discussing a computer that doesn't work anymore." On the other hand, Knight-Ridder Newspapers critic Keith Thomas describes Ocasek's singing as "impassioned". Guitarist Elliot Easton plays a guitar solo that "paid homage to King Crimson leader Robert Fripp." Thomas describes the guitars as "gutsy" and the synthesizers as "winding."
In 1982 "Since You're Gone" was released as the second single from Shake It Up, as the follow-up to "Shake It Up". The song, backed with "Think It Over" in America and "Maybe Baby" in Britain, reached #41 on the Billboard Hot 100 and #24 on the Billboard Mainstream Rock chart. The single was followed by "Victim of Love" in America, and "Think It Over" in Britain.
Like many other Cars songs, "Since You're Gone" had a music video created to accompany it, which starred Ric Ocasek "moping around an empty apartment". The video received adequate airplay on MTV at the time. According to Thomas, the video is one of the Cars' best.
The Cars were an American rock band formed in Boston in 1976. Emerging from the new wave scene in the late 1970s, the line-up consisted of Elliot Easton (lead guitar), Greg Hawkes (keyboards), Ric Ocasek (rhythm guitar), Benjamin Orr (bass guitar), and David Robinson (drums). Ocasek and Orr split lead vocal duties, and Ocasek served as the band's principal songwriter.
The Cars were at the forefront of merging 1970s guitar-oriented rock with the new synthesizer-oriented pop that was then becoming popular and flourishing in the early 1980s. Robert Palmer, music critic for The New York Times and Rolling Stone, described the Cars' musical style: "they have taken some important but disparate contemporary trends—punk minimalism, the labyrinthine synthesizer and guitar textures of art rock, the '50s rockabilly revival and the melodious terseness of power pop—and mixed them into a personal and appealing blend."
In April 2018, the Cars were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and reunited to perform at the induction ceremony. The reunion was their final performance with Ocasek, who died on September 15, 2019 of cardiovascular disease.
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