Punk · New Wave · Pop
From CBGB to the pop charts, without losing the edge.
The biography
Blondie is an American band formed in New York City in 1974 by singer Deborah Harry and guitarist Chris Stein, emerging from the CBGB community. Their first album, Blondie (1976), and second album, Plastic Letters (1978), began to attract attention in Britain, but the breakthrough came with Parallel Lines (1978), produced by Mike Chapman, with “Heart of Glass” and “One Way or Another.” The early 1980s brought “Call Me” (1980, for the film American Gigolo, made with Giorgio Moroder) and the album Autoamerican (1980), with “The Tide Is High” and “Rapture.” The group broke up in 1982 and reunited in the late 1990s; that later reunion is only noted briefly here, as the focus is on 1978–1980.
Blondie fits Past Tunes because they refused to stay in one genre. From punk and new wave roots, they moved into disco, reggae and hip-hop-influenced pop, without sounding like tourists in any of them. Harry’s voice — cool, clear and a little detached — held the different styles together, and the band’s willingness to try something new, song by song, made each hit feel like a discovery rather than a formula.