Gary Numan's The Pleasure Principle
Earlier this month TMZ put Gary Numan in thier 'Memba Him?' and discussed him being "only famous in the U.S. for his 1979 synthpop hit 'Cars.'" But Numan's entire album, for which he put down his guitar, took the Tubeway Army off the cover, and picked up a Moog. His sound falls somewhere between Brian Eno and David Bowie and he effectively becomes the godfather of synthpop. Cars was good, but tracks like Asylum, Films, and Airlane all stand out too. Drummer Cedric Sharpley does wonders to compliment the now electro-soaked tracks (see Engineers and Conversation). I would consider Eno the creator of the genre, having put out progressively more elctronic albums starting with Here Come the Warm Jets in 1973, but more importantly Another Green World in '75. What Numan does is create acessible synth music, for those who shun the artsy/visionary Eno. So thanks Numan, I love the song M.E.!
