You're All I've Got Tonight

"You're All I've Got Tonight"
B-side to "All Mixed Up" in NL
Song by The Cars from the album The Cars
Released	June 6, 1978
Genre	Hard rock, new wave
Length	4:13
Label	Elektra
Writer(s)	Ric Ocasek
Producer(s)	Roy Thomas Baker
The Cars track listing
9 tracks Side one "Good Times Roll" "My Best Friend's Girl" "Just What I Needed" "I'm in Touch with Your World" "Don't Cha Stop" Side two "You're All I've Got Tonight" "Bye Bye Love" "Moving in Stereo" "All Mixed Up"

"You're All I've Got Tonight" is a song by the American rock band the Cars, from their debut album, The Cars. Like "Bye Bye Love" and "Moving in Stereo", two other songs from the album, it continues to receive airplay on classic rock stations today despite never having been released as a single (although it did see release as the B-side to "All Mixed Up" in the Netherlands).

The song opens with a tom-tom drum beat processed with a distinctive flanging effect, leading to a power chord riff played on distorted guitars that also have a distinctive flanging effect. Initially, the rhythm guitar plays a chromatic riff of power chords ascending from A, to A♯, to B, then E to B, and repeating. The riff gives way to an extended vamp on B major. To conclude the verses and introduce the chorus, the band sings "Ahh" in triads, descending in half notes, from B major to A major, while the music strictly maintains a B power chord. At this point, the song could have gone to an E major chord, which would complete an plagal cadence, or a V-IV-I turnaround. Instead, the chorus alternates between G and A major chords, with the vocal harmonies on the G featuring the major seventh, F♯.

The G to A progression leads back to the A - A♯ - B riff of the next verse. Over the B power chord, lead guitarist Elliot Easton plays a trill between the notes D and D♯, respectively the minor and major thirds of the B chord, which reinforces the ambivalence of the song's key. During the second and third verses, a call and response effect is created between Ric Ocasek's vocals and Easton's lead guitar fills. (Both of which are, increasingly, derived from the B blues scale.)