1980 · Behind the Songs
A film song that became a chart giant.
“Call Me” (1980), made for the film American Gigolo with Giorgio Moroder, is a fast, urgent pop song that became one of the biggest hits of 1980. The beat never relaxes, Harry’s vocal is seductive and in control, and the song feels like a city at night — bright, quick and a little dangerous. It was written for a film, but it does not sound like a soundtrack piece; it sounds like a Blondie single that happened to fit a film perfectly.
The collaboration with Moroder matters, because it brought a European electronic pulse to an American new-wave band. The result is a song that moves like disco but hits like rock, and that combination helped carry Blondie from the late 1970s into the 1980s without losing momentum.