"Cars" (Gary Numan)

Here in the US, Gary Numan (aka Gary Webb) didn't really get his due until bands in the 90s like Nine Inch Nails and Smashing Pumpkins started covering his songs live.  To many, he was merely a "one-hit wonder," even though he'd had a string of hit songs in the United Kingdom and was an influence on artists ranging from Devo to Afrika Bambaataa.
But if you're going to be known for a single song on this side of the pond, "Cars" from the 1979 album The Pleasure Principle is a damn good one to be known for.
The song was inspired by an incident where Numan was sitting in London traffic and suddenly found himself being harassed by a couple of bruisers on the sidewalk, who apparently singled him out because of his signature black mascara look (more on that in a minute).  In short, they tried beating him up and pulling him from the vehicle, but Numan locked his doors and drove up on the sidewalk to get away.  
As he commented to Mojo magazine in 2008, "After that, I began to see the car as the tank of modern society."
Speaking of Numan's "look" and persona, his icy, slightly androgynous image was an unintended byproduct of trying to mask the fact that he was just a painfully shy person with bad skin.  
In a 2011 interview with The Music Press, Numan commented that, despite now being called "the godfather of synth," he couldn't even afford to own a synthesizer early on.  Until he had a few hits under his belt and was able to purchase a Moog, he was writing new music by working on rented synthesizers in the studio for only a couple of hours at a time.  In fact, he said he knew little or nothing about analog synthesizers before encountering a Moog that someone had left in the recording studio.  He was intrigued by the instrument and started experimenting with channeling the sound through his guitar pedals and amps to create new textures.  The specific goal was not to be groundbreaking; he was just looking for something that sounded interesting.
When he and his band Tubeway Army eventually released a few of their synth-rock experiments in the late 70s, Numan suddenly found himself an unlikely pop success and in demand to perform--particularly on high profile shows like Britain's Top of the Pops.  Ultimately, the entire robot aesthetic was the result of terrible stage fright and a BBC makeup artist covering him in pale, android-like makeup to hide his severe acne from TV viewers.  
Anyway, as overplayed as "Cars" might be, it somehow still sounds as fresh and futuristic as when I heard it for the first time as a kid, circa 1980.