![]() Parallel Lines became a multi-platinum album that dragged punk into the mainstream kicking and screaming or as producer Mike Chapman called it “modern rock and roll.” Eat to the Beat, Autoamerican, and American GigoloĪs Blondie continued to set the bar impossibly high for themselves, Eat to the Beat, released in 1979, saw the group continue to experiment with styles and deliver the same side-eyed attitude with an emotional core. They were playing disco records.”ĭespite the Herculean task of narrowing down the essential tracks from this album full of gems, “Sunday Girl” is another standout, a piece of sweet pop perfection that sounds ever sweeter in French. When you went out, they weren’t playing Iggy And The Stooges. As Burke told Uncut Magazine, “Disco was the back-drop to punk rock. ![]() “Once I Had A Love” was reworked and rebooted, using synth stylings inspired by Kraftwerk and Giorgio Moroder, a drum beat cribbed from Saturday Night Fever by Clem Burke, and “Heart of Glass” was born. The architect behind all these hits was producer Mark Chapman, who was recruited to clean up their sound and put Blondie through production boot camp. Then there’s the driving guitars and Harry’s taunting vocals on “One Way Or Another,” now one of their most recognizable hits, which paved the way for many a band in the early noughties like the Strokes and the rest of their ilk. It’s preceded by a few solid new wave covers including an infectiously catchy take on follow pop punks The Nerves “Hangin On The Telephone,” which once again takes on new meaning when flipped to the female perspective. While “Heart of Glass” would prove to be a major turning point for the band, it doesn’t even come up on the record until the 10th track. The album also marked their first foray into reggae with “Once I Had A Love” (AKA the Disco Song) that was later repacked and sped up for the chart-topping hit “Heart Of Glass.”Įven with a few hits on their hands, Blondie were regarded as an underground band in the states until the release of their piece de la resistance – Parallel Lines in 1978. In the same vein, “Detroit 442” sounds like sped-up surf rock scuzz that channels a certain Stooges’ lust for life. While most of Plastic Letters shows a band perfecting their pop sound, “I’m On E” sounds almost like a callback to their low-fi, proto-punk sound and Harry’s coolly detached vocals. Like many of Blondie’s best songs, even the album title had double meaning, describing venue marquees and how your name is spelled out on a mugshot. As Gottehrer put it, “Debbie sang part of it in French – I didn’t even know if the French was real, but it became their first hit in the UK. Their cover of Randy & The Rainbows “Denis” flipped the gender script and officially broke the band commercially in the UK. With Gottehrer on producing duties, the album once again reconfigured the 60s sound. As soon as they signed to Chrysalis in 1977, the label reissued the first album and a year later they released their real breakthrough record, Plastic Letters. While Private Stock was certainly an independent label, it wasn’t exactly the place to cultivate an “indie” sound. While the record spawned many of their live favorites, it never cracked the charts in a major way. 2 in Australia, which was another homage to the girl group sound but with more lustful undertones. The album also spurned the group’s first hit, “In the Flesh” which charted at No. Hailed as a new wave ingénue with looks to kill, Harry was too campy and too pop for the underground scene, they didn’t know what to make of her.Īs much as the Ramones are given credit for subverting 60s pop and rock, Blondie is just as much responsible for making girl groups sound tragically hip. Singing subverted teenage love songs at age 31 is just the kind of tongue-in-cheek appeal that made Harry such a charismatic frontwoman. From the very first track of “X Offender,” Harry does her best Shangri-Las impression except instead of singing about teenage romance, she’s singing about a cop and a sex worker – truly a love song for the times. ![]() Representing Klein’s encyclopedic knowledge of cultural relics from the past, the album riffed on everything from B-movies, rockabilly culture, and most noticeably girl groups. Blondie had earned their punk stripes gigging at Max’s Kansas City and CBGB and Gottehrer snatched them up, signing them to the indie label Private Stock and releasing their self-titled debut, Blondie in 1976. Richard Gottehrer (producer of Blondie’s first two albums, Blondie and Plastic Letters) had left his former label and was looking to put out a compilation of bands in the New York scene.
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