Blink-182's Mark Hoppus Shares "Creepy" Cover of the Cars' "Just What I Needed" in Memory of Ric Ocasek

Ric Ocasek photo by Adanne Osefoh / Mark Hoppus photo by Cover Media

BY Josiah HughesPublished Sep 16, 2019

Yesterday (September 15), the world lost a singular musical voice when the Cars frontman Ric Ocasek was found dead. A number of musicians from across the genre spectrum have paid tribute to the artist in myriad ways, and now Blink-182 frontman Mark Hoppus has shared a previously unreleased Cars cover. 

Posting to SoundCloud under his own name, Hoppus shared a bleak, minor-chord cover of the Cars' seminal hit "Just What I Needed." He explained that the version of the song was originally intended for a television series:

A couple years ago, I was asked to record a creepy cover of "Just What I Needed" for a TV show. They wanted moody and strange, dark, and drony, with space for dialogue to go over it. I went into the studio with my friend James Ingram and this is what we came up with. The show was cancelled so quickly the episode never aired, but if you can imagine a grim and grizzled detective determinedly working a murder case that shook them to the very core of their being, this is the music the show requested. It's been sitting on a hard drive ever since, and with the sad news of Ric Ocasek's passing, I thought I'd put it up here. Enjoy it. And go listen to The Cars.

Listen to Mark Hoppus' Cars cover below.

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