Debbie Harry picks her favourite protest anthem
Emerging as the blonde bombshell fronting Blondie in the mid-1970s, Debbie Harry and her bandmates followed an early passion for punk towards a more stable career as a pop act of New York’s burgeoning new wave scene.
The band’s bold post-punk sound, defined by Chris Stein’s guitar virtuosity and Clem Burke’s deft beat-keeping, struck a chord in 1978 with the release of Parallel Lines, their third studio album, which included essential hits like ‘Heart of Glass’, ‘Hanging on the Telephone’ and ‘Sunday Girl’.
Thanks to her unique stage presence and platinum blonde hair, Harry became a true rock icon of the 20th century. “As a child, she used to dream that her mother was Marilyn Monroe and once said her early goals were to be noticed and to be famous. Well, she did that,” Kirsty Young said, introducing the Blondie star during her 2011 appearance on BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs.
“She used to hang out with the Ramones, Talking Heads, David Bowie and Iggy Pop; she was painted by Andy Warhol and feted the world over,” she added. “It’s quite an odd thing,” Young said, sitting before one of her musical heroes. “I probably wasted a good ten years wanting to be Debbie Harry.”
During her interview, Harry played some of her favourite songs, old and new. She reached back to the 1960s to play The Velvet Underground’s ‘White Light/White Heat’, kept her finger on the pulse with Calvin Harris’ ‘Merrymaking at My Place’ and went classical with Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 5 in C sharp minor.
Harry picked out Nina Simone’s classic protest anthem, ‘Strange Fruit’ for her second choice. “I’ve chosen Nina Simone doing ‘Strange Fruit’,” Harry introduced. “She came through the ‘60s and lived through the ‘50s and all that. So, she was a woman who really knew about that, and musically, why I chose it, was because I really love her left hand and the way she plays”.
Harry added: “I’ve always felt that the way she plays the piano and the way she sings, they’re really – I don’t wanna use the word, but I have to – integrated.”
In her introduction to the song, Harry refers to Simone’s experience of racism during the 1950s and ‘60s as a Black woman. ‘Strange Fruit’ was written by Abel Meeropol and first recorded by Billie Holiday in 1939. The poignant lyrics protest the lynching of Black Americans, artistically comparing the victims to fruit hanging from trees.
Throughout the 20th century, ‘Strange Fruit’ became one of the most prevalent anthems of the Civil Rights Movement in the US. Listen to Nina Simone’s version below.
