Blondie (band)

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Blondie
Blondie in Appearance (2006)
Blondie in Appearance (2006)
General information
Genre (s) New wave , power pop
founding 1974, 1997
resolution 1982
Website www.blondie.net
Founding members
Debbie Harry
Chris Stein
Gary Valentine
Clem Burke
Jimmy Destri
Other later members
guitar
 Paul Carbonara
guitar
 Frank Infante
bass
 Leigh Foxx
bass
 Nigel Harrison
Debbie Harry and Chris Stein in a live appearance in 1977

Blondie is an American New Wave - band , the 1974 by Debbie Harry and Chris Stein in New York City was founded. Her biggest success was Heart of Glass in 1979 .

Band history

1974–1982: Foundation and great success

Harry was first the singer of the folk band Wind in the Willows, Chris Stein guitarist of the stilettos. The new band was formed as Angel and the Snake before renaming itself to Blondie in August 1974. Their first single, X-Offender , was released in mid-1976 and remained quite unsuccessful. The band's breakthrough came in the spring of 1978 with the song Denis , a cover version of the song Denise by Randy & the Rainbows , which reached number 2 in Great Britain.

The international breakthrough followed in the spring of 1979. The album Parallel Lines , released in the late summer of 1978 and produced by Mike Chapman , entered the charts in numerous countries, as did the singles Picture This , One Way or Another and Sunday Girl . The song Heart of Glass became a number one hit in the US , UK and Germany .

The band was one of the first rock bands to produce music videos . With the start of the music channel MTV in August 1981, Blondie quickly became known to a mass audience. Debbie Harry's hydrogen-blonde hair and her often hypothermic, impassive-looking voice became the band's trademark and were copied many times. With her wild and excessive performances, Harry did everything to maintain the image of a punk band , but also because of her activities as a photo model, the group with her as figurehead could no longer be included in the anarchic punk scene. Blondie, and especially her figurehead Debbie Harry, became idols of the New Wave era instead .

The title Call Me , by Giorgio Moroder for the film American Gigolo produced , was established in early 1980 an international hit, as are brought out in the autumn of the same year Reggae -number The Tide Is High , a cover version of the hit song of the Paragons . The song Rapture was one of the first hip-hop tracks to be sung by whites in early 1981 and was the first song in this genre to hit number 1 on the US charts.

1982–1996: Separation and solo projects

In the following years the band became quieter. Harry started a solo career parallel to her engagement with Blondie, but her LP KooKoo (1981), produced by Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards , flopped and the Blondie LP The Hunter (1982) also fell short of expectations. In November 1982, Blondie was finally disbanded. Drummer Clem Burke and bassist Nigel Harrison formed the band Checkered Past together with Steve Jones , Michael Des Barres and Tony Sales . When Harry's partner Chris Stein became seriously ill, she devoted himself to his care for years.

Since 1997: reorganization and comeback

After there had been largely unnoticed efforts to revive Blondie in the 1990s, no one seriously expected a revival of the group, especially since Harry had meanwhile also made a name for himself as an actress. Very surprisingly, the band made a commercially successful comeback in the spring of 1999 with the album No Exit and the number one hit Maria .

The album was received less positively by the critics. It was only with The Curse of Blondie and the single Good Boys that was extracted from it in autumn 2003 that Blondie was able to return artistically to the standards of earlier times. In 2006 the band was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame .

2014 rejected Blondie due to the discriminatory Russian laws on homosexuality the invitation, during the Winter Olympics in Sochi to play. Debbie Harry publicly admitted her bisexuality that same year .

Discography

Studio albums

year title Top ranking, total weeks, awardChart placementsChart placements
(Year, title, rankings, weeks, awards, notes) 		Remarks
DE DE AT AT CH CH UK UK US US
1978 Plastic letters - - - UK10
platinum
platinum

(54 weeks)UK 		US72 (17 weeks)
US
First published: February 1978
Producer: Richard Gottehrer
Parallel lines DE9 (30 weeks)
DE 		AT24 (4 weeks)
AT 		- UK1
platinum
platinum

(114 weeks)UK 		US6th
platinum
platinum

(103 weeks)US
First published: September 1978
No. 140 on the Rolling Stone 500 (2012 list)
Producer: Mike Chapman
1979 Blondie - - - UK75
gold
gold

(1 week)UK 		-
First published: December 1976
Producers: Richard Gottehrer, Craig Leon
Eat to the beat DE23 (8 weeks)
DE 		AT19 (4 weeks)
AT 		- UK1
platinum
platinum

(38 weeks)UK 		US17th
platinum
platinum

(51 weeks)US
First published: October 1979
Producer: Mike Chapman
1980 AutoAmerican DE42 (10 weeks)
DE 		AT18 (6 weeks)
AT 		- UK3
platinum
platinum

(16 weeks)UK 		US7th
platinum
platinum

(43 weeks)US
First published: November 19, 1980
Billboard R&B charts: # 25 (7 weeks)
Producer: Mike Chapman
1982 The Hunter DE49 (2 weeks)
DE 		- - UK9 (12 weeks)
UK 		US33 (12 weeks)
US
First published: May 24, 1982
Producer: Mike Chapman
1999 No exit DE18 (23 weeks)
DE 		AT20 (14 weeks)
AT 		CH21 (17 weeks)
CH 		UK3
gold
gold

(19 weeks)UK 		US18 (15 weeks)
US
First published: February 23, 1999
Producer: Craig Leon
2003 The Curse of Blondie DE84 (1 week)
DE 		- - UK36 (2 weeks)
UK 		US160 (1 week)
US
First published: October 2003
Producers: Craig Leon, Steve Thompson, Randy Nicklaus
2011 Panic of Girls - - - UK73 (1 week)
UK 		-
First published: July 2011
Producers: Jeff Saltzman, Kato Khandwala
2014 4 (0) Ever: Greatest Hits Deluxe Redux /
Ghosts of Download 		DE44 (1 week)
DE 		- - UK16
silver
silver

(2 weeks)UK 		US109 (1 week)
US
First release: May 13th, 2014
double album
2017 Pollinator DE21 (2 weeks)
DE 		AT27 (2 weeks)
AT 		CH22 (3 weeks)
CH 		UK4 (5 weeks)
UK 		US63 (1 week)
US
Initial release: May 5, 2017
Producer: John Congleton

gray hatching : no chart data available for this year

More studio albums

  • 1981: At Home with Debbie Harry and Chris Stein (Interview LP, Promo for the album AutoAmerican )
  • 1995: X-Offenders
  • 2000: Is the Name of a Band (2 CDs)

literature

  • Debbie Harry, Chris Stein, Victor Bockris: Making Tracks: The Rise of Blondie. Da Capo Press, New York 1998, ISBN 0-306-80858-7 .
  • Dick Porter, Kris Needs: Blondie - Parallel Lives . Bosworth Musikverlag, 2012, ISBN 978-3-86543-733-4 .

swell

  1. ↑ Music and Facts
  2. ↑ Chris Hastings: My 'sensual' nights with women, by Debbie Harry: Blondie star reveals she is bisexual despite relationship with bandmate. In: Daily Mail, Mail Online, April 5, 2014
  3. ↑ Chart sources: DE AT CH UK US
  4. ^ The Billboard Albums by Joel Whitburn , 6th Edition, Record Research 2006, ISBN 0-89820-166-7 .
  5. ^ Joel Whitburn : Top R&B Albums 1965–1998, ISBN 0-89820-134-9 .
  6. ↑ RS500 albums (list 2012)

Web links

Commons : Blondie  - collection of images, videos and audio files