The Car Seat Headrest / Cars Debacle Cost Matador Records Over $50,000

Car Seat Headrest's new album, Teens of Denial, originally featured a song called "Just What I Wanted/Not Just What I Needed," which contained elements of the Cars' "Just What I Needed." The song initially received clearance from the Cars' publishers, but Ric Ocasek ended up pulling his approval shortly before the record's release. Car Seat Headrest's label, Matador, was then forced to recall all existing copies of the LP, and delay its physical release until the summer. (The album was digitally released on May 20 as planned, with the recalled song re-recorded as "Not Just What I Needed." It does not feature the Cars' interpolation.) The recalled records were subsequently destroyed. Matador head of sales Rusty Clarke revealed to the A.V. Club that the debacle cost the label more than $50,000, with costs expected to rise. “It could look even more grim, because this is also a worldwide release,” Clarke told the A.V. Club. “It’s a substantial cost.” Clarke also said it was the first time the label had been forced to recall a record from retail, and called it "an unprecedented situation."

Car Seat Headrest's Will Toledo was also interviewed for the story. “For the label, this was a nightmare situation,” he said. “People were crying; people were not happy about it.” He also spoke freely about his discomfort with Ocasek's role in the record's recall:

What the conversation revolves around is not the art itself at all, and that’s the only part of it that really seems wrong to me. I don’t think that Ric ever listened to the album or the song, which is the only part that really bothers me. He can do whatever he wants and it’s his right to do so. But I just hope that if I ever get to the point of being where he is, and a situation like this comes along, that my first reaction would still be, ‘Okay, well, what’s the song?’ I would want to listen to it first and see what, artist-to-artist, what’s going on, rather than it be my manager telling me they’re doing something bad, let’s sue them, and saying, ‘Okay, I’m mad now. I have no idea what the situation is, because it’s removed by many people from me, but that seems to be the situation here.’

Read our Icebreaker interview with Toledo.

via Jeremy Gordon