Giorgio Moroder’s favourite Blondie song: “Chris always wanted to do disco”
There are very few people who you can say wholeheartedly define a genre of music. Specific movements don’t start at their conception, they have a foundation built by someone, but then other artists and bands come along and expand upon it. For instance, rock ‘n’ roll began in the ‘50s, but bands like Led Zeppelin, The Who and Guns N’ Roses all helped that sound evolve. In that sense, finding someone you can definitively call the staple of a genre is tricky.
Of course, like most rules, there are always exceptions, and one of these is disco. Disco was a genre that burnt bright and fast; while it’s still a genre of music that people listen to frequently, the parameters of the sound were strict and, therefore, struggled to be expanded upon. As such, the movement remains somewhat stagnant, but for the brief period that it was the most popular genre in the world, one of the biggest names in defining and perfecting the sound was Giorgio Moroder.
There are very few people out there who can be aligned with a specific sound as much as Moroder can be assigned with disco. Simply put, the movement wouldn’t have become what it did without him, as he was able to create a sound that got people dancing, made them happy and resonated worldwide. Some of the songs he worked on still fill dancefloors within seconds, and it’s his infectious style that leads to this bizarre effect.
He is such a definitive name in the movement that when Daft Punk made their award-winning disco album Random Access Memories, they decided to create a song they could wholly attribute to Moroder. ‘Giorgio by Moroder’ is an ode towards the artist, containing a monologue from him before going into a groove that even the stiffest of feet could two-step to.
Because of his impact, you can almost guarantee that almost every song he includes on a playlist will be one you can move to. He put together his ultimate party playlist, which contained songs by various artists from different eras. One of the tracks is from Blondie, a band who were happy to dance around multiple genres of music, but managed to make a song that appealed to the masses with ‘Heart of Glass’, which Moroder puts early on in his playlist and is cemented as one of his favourite songs by the band.
Out of everything they released, ‘Heart of Glass’ is the most disco-inspired. Released in 1978, the song is one of the most popular by the band, and for good reason. It’s an interesting contradiction, as the song itself is heavily rooted in disco. Chris Stein wanted to make a disco song, knowing full well that a lot of fans might not be keen on the new angle taken by Blondie. “Chris always wanted to do disco,” said Jimmy Destri, “We used to do ‘Heart Of Glass’ to upset people.”
While the song is one you can dance to and have a good time with, the inspiration behind the lyrics is quite dark. Debbie Harry explained the meaning once, saying that it was about a crazed fan who wouldn’t leave her alone. “Lyrically, it was about a stalker who was pursuing me,” she said, “And Chris saved me from him.”
