Blondie Regeneration
 Parallel Lines, Blondie's third album, was produced by Mike Chapman. Its first two singles were Picture This and Hanging on the Telephone. Heart of Glass was their first U.S. hit, and was a reworking of a rock song that the group had performed since its formation, but updated with strong elements of disco music. Clem Burke later said the revamped version was inspired partly by Kraftwerk and partly by the Bee Gee's Stayin' Alive, whose drum beat Burke tried to emulate. He and Stein gave Jimmy Destri much of the credit for the final result, noting that Destri's appreciation of technology had led him to introduce synthesizers and to rework the keyboard sections. Although some members of the British music press condemned Blondie for selling out, the song became a popular worldwide success. Selling more than one million copies and garnering major airplay, the single reached number one in many countries including the U.S., where, for the most part, Blondie had previously been considered an underground band. The song was accompanied by a music video that showcased Deborah Harry's hard-edged and playfully sexual persona, and she began to attain a celebrity status that set her apart from the other band members, who were largely ignored by the media.
Blondie's next single in the U.S. was a more aggressive rock song, One Way or Another, and reached the top 30. The band's greatest success continued to be in the UK, where an alternate single choice, Sunday Girl, became another number one smash.
Their fourth album, Eat to the Beat, was well received by critics as a suitable follow-up to Parallel Lines but in the U.S. it failed to achieve the same level of success. In the UK, the single Atomic reached number one, Dreaming number two, and Union City Blue was another substantial hit, while in the U.S. their singles did not chart as strongly.
Deborah Harry worked with the Italian songwriter and producer Giorgio Moroder, who had been responsible for Donna Summer's biggest hits, and they composed the song Call Me for the soundtrack of the film American Gigolo. The song became the biggest hit of Blondie's career, spending six weeks at number one in the U.S. and becoming a hit throughout the world. Their album Autoamerican was released shortly thereafter and contained two more worldwide hits, the reggae-styled The Tide Is High and the rap-flavored Rapture, each hitting number one in both the U.S. and UK. Rapture was the first song containing elements of rap music vocals to reach number one in the U.S. and helped introduce the then-underground rap genre to a larger audience. Rapture would be their only single to achieve a higher chart position on the U.S. charts than in the UK, where it peaked at number five.
|
