Blondie

The blonde vamp Debbie Harry, coming off a mediocre career as a rock singer in the late 1960s (she sang one of the songs on the folk album Wind In The Willows, 1968), was leading an equally mediocre life as a sales clerk and manicurist before her body was discovered by “Playboy” magazine. The pin-up, who in the meantime had become a waitress at Max’s, made important connections, and in 1973 she landed a spot in a small band led by Fred Smith and Chris Stein. The latter, in 1975, formed a group specifically for her — Blondie. Immersed in the nightlife craziness of the time, thanks to her image as the “Marilyn Monroe of punk” and the band’s fresh, immediate pop sound, Blondie soon became one of the main attractions of the club scene. X Offender (Private Stock, 1976) and especially the sensual slow number In The Flesh (Private Stock, 1976) turned a visual gimmick into a musical reality.

Blondie (Private Stock, 1976), featuring both singles and Rip Her To Shreds, made history for its compromise sound — too polished to be punk and too raw to be pop — mischievously inspired by film soundtracks, funk dances, and old Broadway melodies. Stein, however, was coining a kind of disco music for punks, marrying the existentialism of the new “damned” generation with the need to make clubgoers dance — a “disco-punk” that also benefited from the singer’s alluring erotic poses. Keyboardist Jimmy Destri skillfully fused the dogmas of disco music with those of garage rock.

After a disappointing Plastic Letters (Chrysalis, 1977), despite the moderate success of the singles Denis, Kidnapper, and Presence Dear, Blondie quickly bounced back with Parallel Lines (Chrysalis, 1978), which anchored the Harry–Stein–Destri trio to seasoned musicians and an experienced producer. The charts completely surrendered to the sensual, atmospheric disco music of Heart Of Glass, while Hanging On The Telephone, Sunday Girl, and I’m Gonna Love You Too helped fuel the myth of the femme fatale.

International success came with the overwhelming exuberance of the 1979 hits Dreaming and Atomic, underlined by a psychedelic trash-organ sound and sung with the naive, cynical drive of girl-group nursery rhymes — made dazzling by studio treatment and infused with the fatalism typical of the “blank generation.” These are the pillars of Eat To The Beat (Chrysalis, 1979), whose Union City Blue and Shayla would otherwise be merely mediocre pop songs.

In the following two years, Blondie aimed only to replicate that disco success — first with Rapture, from their most ambitious album, Autoamerican (Chrysalis, 1980), and then with the single Call Me, produced by Giorgio Moroder.

Debbie Harry released her first solo album, Koo Koo (Chrysalis, 1981 – Razor & Tie, 1999), and the band’s saga ended on a melancholy note with Hunter (Chrysalis, 1982). After Stein’s heart attack, Harry retired to minor film acting.

Debbie Harry would return with increasingly less original solo albums: Rockbird (Geffen, 1986), with French Kissing and I Want You; Def Dumb & Blonde (Chrysalis, 1989), with the hit I Want That Man and Maybe For Sure; and Debravation (Sire, 1993), a confused parade of musical styles.

With Blondie, modern dance music was born — combining experimental fervor, instrumental enthusiasm, and detached singing with high technology and punk aesthetics.

Deborah Harry also sang in the Jazz Passengers in 1994.

No Exit (Beyond, 1999) is a mature album by a mature band, but it sounds somewhat artificially, like a bunch of songs that somebody had forgotten in a drawer. Screaming Skin is ska, Dig Up The Conjo is disco, Under The Gun is cowpunk, and Boom Bom In The Zoom Zoom Room is pop-jazz. Harry sings everything with diligent competence.

The Curse (Epic, 2003) was a senile attempt at still sounding youthful, toying with the new styles of popular music without ever truly connecting with the zeitgeist.