written by Debbie Harry and Chris Stein

produced by Mike Chapman

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I’m making this page July 1st, 2021, the 76th birthday of... okay, I

was not ready for this, you very well may not be either. Her birth

name is, in fact... Angela Trimble. Deborah Ann “Debbie” Harry, as

we of course know her, the voice of Blondie. Happy Birthday, DH!!

She was not a solo act, not exactly nicknaming herself Blondie as some unaware listeners believed at first. Rather, after dying her hair blonde, catcallers christened her “Blondie.” She was born in Miami, then adopted very young and raised in the northeast.

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There’s our answer: she was adopted by Richard and Catherine Harry, and renamed Debbie at that time. She floated through a few minor band dabblings, in the midst of which she met and began dating Christopher Stein, with whom she formed Blondie in ’75. Soon after, in and around signing a deal with Chrysalis Records, they added Gary Valentine on bass, Clem Burke on drums, and Jimmy Destri on piano and keyboards. Chris maintained the role of lead guitar, and Debbie’s was self-evident.

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Blondie released a new album every year from 1976-80, their popularity and acclaim building with each. Soon they were charting all over the world of pop-sprinkled rock and roll, and had said world at their feet. Albums one and two earned them minor initial success, but it was 1978’s Parallel Lines that really kicked them into stardom with hits “Heart Of Glass,” “Sunday Girl” and “One Way Or Another,” all single-released in ’79. 1979’s Eat To The Beat’s first single and biggest hit was “Dreaming.”

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The ’80s opened, and Autoamerican then rivaled Parallel Lines for biggest Blondie album, featuring the huge “The Tide Is High,” dropping on Halloween and pre-dating the record. Blondie rang in 1981 with “Rapture,” Autoamerican’s other #1... and only other single. As a matter of fact, it was enough to carry them through the entirety of 1981, with no more new material that year, as the band took some time off for a break. But hey, that’s all right. The meantime until their next album was filled by the compilation The Best Of Blondie, unleashed in fall ’81.

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I chose “Rapture” for Debbie’s birthday tribute because, besides being a huge Blondie staple and a milestone in their career, but one of its features being its fearlessly creative use of lyrics (how many #1 songs do you know that contain the word “sacroiliac?”)—and the fact that 2021 marks the song’s 40th anniversary of single release—it was also notorious for breaking some more new ground in the young world of rap, which thus far was owned by a few fresh acts like the Sugar Hill Gang. SHG’s anthem “Rapper’s Delight” was the very first top 40 rap hit... BUT, “Rapture” then later on became the genre’s very first #1. It takes a few verses to get to the rap, but there’s another reason to cover such a song: it shows off Debbie’s ability to both sing and rap. You don’t really have to be able to sing to have a great rap career, but vocal rhythm of course is a must. Numerous pop music journalists wrote about the irony of a genre being established and broken through predominantly by black male rappers and musicians, abruptly being topped by a rock band headed by a white woman. A platinum blonde-dyed white woman. Just goes to show us the realm of mainstream music never stops surprising us. Not to be outdone, the video coincided with the birth of MTV, and became not only the first rap video to be played on the channel, but the first to make it into heavy rotation. Especially with the meager available selection of music videos at the time, “Rapture” would have its mileage milked.

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After the triple-single-spawning The Hunter from ’82, Blondie temporarily disbanded. Commercial decline, illness (on the part of Chris Stein), drug use and band member disputes all played a role in the breakup. Debbie went solo through the remainder of the decade, glamming herself up into an ’80s monster pop queen, though the paling of her solo material in comparison to her success with Blondie kept a lot of us from noticing. Though her late 1986 album Rockbird and its singles did catch some favorable attention.

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Blondie reunited in 1997, original lineup intact, and banged out album seven, No Exit, blowing everyone away by hitting a dozen charts and nailing #1 in the UK with No Exit’s leading single, “Maria,” by an old band who hadn’t worked together in a decade and a half. Coolio collaborated with them on the title track. And they weren’t done yet; the ’00s and ’10s only brought more singles, and Blondie fans old and new had enough material to keep them well occupied and taken care of.

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Final note: on the Autoamerican album’s original 6½-minute of the song, the third verse is omitted. The single version, though a minute shorter, does contain the third verse. I’ll put in the lyrics to said verse below, and link to both versions.

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Have notes to add? Let me know!

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YT:

full original album version

full single version

music video

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Blondie’s official website