Updated at 10:52 p.m.

Ric Ocasek, the lead singer of the rock band The Cars, died Sunday in New York; he was discovered unconscious Sunday afternoon at his townhouse in Manhattan. A New York Police Department spokesman confirmed Ocasek’s dying to NPR. There is a few confusion about Ocasek’s age: The NYPD stated that he was 75; public data record his age as 70 years outdated.

The Boston-based band was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2018; the Rock Hall referred to as The Cars “the ultimate New Wave dream machine: a hook-savvy super-charged quintet that fused 60s pop, 70s glam and avant-rock minimalism into a decade of dashboard-radio nirvana.”

Ocasek — The Cars’ lead singer, guitarist and songwriter — was born in Baltimore and raised in Cleveland. He co-founded the group with Benjamin Orr, a bassist and vocalist with whom he had begun enjoying in Ohio. The two started touring as a duo earlier than touchdown in Boston. The Cars got here collectively in 1976 with three different musicians: guitarist Elliot Easton, keyboard participant Greg Hawkes and drummer David Robinson.

Within a yr, the group was signed to Elektra. During the preliminary wave of publicity for his or her eponymous debut album, then-Rolling Stone critic Jon Pareles predicted the band’s lasting attraction. He wrote: “Everybody liked it: New Wavers recognized Ocasek’s Velvet Underground debts and the cunning ambivalence of his lyrics, while rock fans and radio programmers picked up on the catchy tunes and meticulous arrangements.”

Several cuts from The Cars turned prompt radio staples, together with “Just What I Needed,” “Good Times Roll,” “My Best Friend’s Girl” and “You’re All I’ve Got Tonight.” Each of the group’s subsequent 4 albums emerged as large business successes as properly.

But even at its most Top 40-friendly, The Cars wove offbeat, New Wave parts into its sound and look that have been an ideal match for the MTV age, reminiscent of in 1984’s “You Might Think,” which gained the first-ever Video of the Year honor on the MTV Video Music Awards.

Ocasek additionally labored in A&R and produced work by New Wave-era friends like Suicide and Romeo Void. The Cars broke up in 1988, however Ocasek’s affect in rock prolonged properly past the apex of the group’s profession. In addition to releasing half a dozen solo albums, he labored as a producer for main bands of a youthful era, together with Weezer, No Doubt, Guided by Voices and Bad Religion. Orr died of pancreatic most cancers in 2000, however in 2011, the surviving members of The Cars reunited and launched a brand new album, Move Like This.