‘Atomic’: The Blondie hit that Debbie Harry calls a “spaghetti western”
Sweat, safety pins, and hepatitis infection: New York’s punk age produced a wealth of subversive and groundbreaking artists. That tiny, dirty stage at CBGB’s in the East Village launched some of America’s most exciting musicians during the 1970s, from the leather-clad energy of the Ramones to the weird and wonderful sounds of Talking Heads. One of the most diverse and successful groups to emerge from this scene were Blondie, whose enigmatic vocalist, Debbie Harry, took them from the punk clubs of the East Village to the heights of the mainstream pop charts.
From their very early days, Blondie’s sound was much more expansive than the abrasive barre-chord-centric sounds of punk rock. Punk’s rebellious attitude and air of self-determination certainly fit with the manifesto of Harry and the band, but they were always striving for a much more eclectic sound than the majority of punk groups. Namely, Blondie had their sights set on mainstream success, which they found in swathes with their third studio album, Parallel Lines.
Topping the UK album chart and reaching number six in the USA, the album established Blondie in the musical mainstream, in addition to seeing them escape their punk roots. Within that album, the band draw upon everything from power pop to disco – a cardinal sin for most punk outfits. It captured their eclectic influences and set a precedent for the band going forward. After the intense success of singles like ‘Heart Of Glass’, the group could not help but strive for the same success on subsequent records.
While the band were still striving to develop new and exciting ideas, such as the pioneering hip-hop-inspired ‘Rapture’, band members were consistently harking back to defining anthems like ‘Heart Of Glass’. In 1980, as the age of new wave was firmly established in the musical mainstream, this inspiration allowed Blondie to land upon another of their defining anthems. Earning the band a number-one single in the UK, ‘Atomic’ ushered in a bold new era of music at the beginning of the 1980s.
Reflecting both the existential dread of the Cold War and the sleek stylishness of the new wave, the track created a perfect storm which enraptured audiences across the world. Penned by keyboardist Jimmy Destri along with Debbie Harry, the track quickly became one of Blondie’s defining moments, which is not all that surprising given that the song has its roots in the sounds and atmosphere of ‘Heart Of Glass’.
“He was trying to do something like ‘Heart Of Glass’,” Harry later recalled of Destri’s songwriting techniques, “And then, somehow or another, we gave it the spaghetti western treatment. Before that, it was just lying there like a lox.” Harry never expanded upon her spaghetti western analogy, leaving its meaning largely up for interpretation. However, it seems likely that she meant the track was attempting to be something that it was not – much like how spaghetti westerns pretended that the Italian countryside was actually the plains of Wild West-era America.
Conversely, she might have meant that the song, like those western productions, is grandiose and heroic, which would also ring true. “The lyrics, well, a lot of the time I would write while the band were just playing the song and trying to figure it out,” the singer continued. “I would just be scatting along with them, and I would just start going, ‘Ooh, your hair is beautiful.'”
This western inspiration, along with the effects of their previous track ‘Heart Of Glass’, helped to make ‘Atomic’ one of the band’s most recognisable and successful singles. Moreover, it firmly established Blondie as a force to be reckoned with in the pop and new wave scene of the early 1980s, something they only seemed to build upon as the years went by.
