“A novelty”: How did Blondie turn a joke into a classic hit?
The beauty of Blondie is that they never took themselves too seriously. Amid the constant demurring about whether they were punk or not, it seems this tenet of playfulness pushes them towards the legion of CBGB brethren more than any other. It is also a trait that makes their music inherently joyous.
The joy extended to the inner operations of the band. While they might have faced some harrowing times in New York City before they found success, and drugs did their best to derail the party, for the most part, being in Blondie seems to have been as sunny an experience as listening to the group. In this regard, it seems perfectly fitting that it was a joke that brought them to the forefront of pop culture.
By the time 1979 came around, the band had released three studio albums, and all of them had floundered. Parallel Lines might now be seen as their breakthrough record, but the first three singles from the ’78 record were just as overlooked as everything that had gone before. The group might have had a small following among their CBGB faithful, but the outside world was yet to appreciate Blondie.
Looking back, it’s hard to see why the band waited until the new year to release ‘Heart of Glass’, given that it now stands out as a slice of pop perfection. Perhaps when you compose something as a joke, you never expect to have the last laugh and see it become your first foray into the Hot 100.
As it happens, the disco-new-wave hybrid was actually the group essentially crafting an anti-hit. They had grown accustomed to their lack of commercial success, and that fate had liberated them to fool around and embrace the potential for their playfulness to put a few cynical noses out of joint. “When we did ‘Heart of Glass, ’ it wasn’t cool in our social set to play disco,” Debbie Harry explained.
But trying to be cool to appease their peers and the press had gone out the window when it failed to rein in hits. The band had essentially only started so that the group could make up for lost time following the tricky trials that they faced in their adolescence. When their debut album was released in 1976, Harry was already 31, and she was keen to seize the vitality of youth that had been sapped by hardship in her 20s.
So, if fooling around with a disco joke was fun to play, then why not play on? “We did it because we wanted to be uncool. It was based around a Roland Rhythm Machine and the backing took over 10 hours to get down,” Harry added. It was one of the last songs that they recorded for Parallel Lines, and there was studio time to spare. So, rather than doggedly stick to the punkier sound they had worked on throughout, they decided to let their hair down and embrace the other musical movement that was unfurling in New York.
“We didn’t expect the original to get that big,” guitarist Chris Stein said. “We only did it as a novelty to put more diversity into the album.” In truth, the group had written an early version of the hit way back in ’74, but whether the delay was because they didn’t take the anthem all that seriously or the fickle fingers of fate were intervening to save it for the right moment is not even known to the band.
However, what remains certain is how the track almost instantly defined their sound and endeared them to the masses. It put to bed the debate about whether they were punk or not, which had perhaps hamstrung their rise, and made it clear that no matter what rack in the record store shop they find themselves, they could provide a good time.
