Blondie
One may wonder, what would have happened to dancer and waitress Debbie Harry, if she hadn’t once joined a girl-group trio The Stilettos and hadn’t met there Chris Stein. She might have had quite a respectable life. Or she could have gone another way and become a Playboy star. Or she could just have died at some concert after a drug overdose. But it never happened and now we have iconic rock band Blondie, one of the pioneers of punk rock in the USA. Debbie played in this formation not the last part – one of the most beautiful women on stage she also had an amazing voice and wasn’t afraid of experimenting with genres. Or rather «isn’t afraid», because the singer (and actress) in her 66 isn’t going to stop at what she has already achieved. Debbie’s influence on the world stage is hard to overestimate – her work inspired Madonna, Gwen Stefani and many others.
Surprisingly, Blondie was more popular abroad than at home. The self-titled debut album released in 1976 climbed to #14 of the Australian chart, but remained rather unnoticed in the USA although it included songs like «In the Flesh». Album «Plastic Letters» (1978) followed the same trend: it became platinum in the UK, but reached only # 72 in the U.S. The track called «Denis» was especially popular in Europe.
The first real breakthrough of Blondie is probably their album «Parallel Lines» (1978), which not only became multi-platinum in the U.S, UK and Canada, but also hit #1 in the UK chart and #6 in the U.S. chart. As it turned out later, it was the best result for the whole band history. Six of twelve album tracks were released as singles, including hits «Heart of Glass», «Hanging on the Telephone», «Sunday Girl» and «One Way or Another».
The next two albums – «Eat to the Beat» (1979) and «Autoamerican» (1980) – repeated the multi-platinum success and were released in Europe adding to recognizable band tracks. At the same time as «Eat to the Beat» came out Debbie and her bandmates wrote song «Call Me» for American Gigolo movie, which topped the charts for several weeks and now is on the lists of the best songs of all time.
When in 1982 album «The Hunter» was released, the audience was already not so crazy about the band music. Unfavourable situation got even worse because of drugs, Stein’s illness and conflicts inside the group caused by close attention of the press to Debbie Harry against other band members. As a result, in the same year 1982 the band decided to part their ways to solo careers or other projects.
And after 15 years Blondie reunited determined to prove everyone that it was too early to write them off. Since 1997 the band released three albums– No Exit (1999), The Curse of Blondie (2003), Panic of Girls (2011), which failed to bring back the former glory of the band, though. But the musicians don’t seem to be upset at all – they enjoy playing music and that’s enough for them.
