The 1980 Blondie song “too explicit” for Debbie Harry to perform: “We couldn’t do live shows”
Every pop culture icon needs to find the right time and place. For Debbie Harry, it wasn’t until she was 31 that fame was finally bestowed upon her.
By that time, she had reconciled her childhood adoption, rubbed shoulders with stars now long since faded while working at the BBC Radio’s offices in New York, worked as a waitress in the renowned rock joint Max’s Kansas City, became a go-go dancer at a New Jersey discotheque and even tried her hand at being a Playboy Bunny.
So, by the time 1974 swung around, she was firmly placed to witness a shifting in the zeitgeist and seize upon a new chance to reinvigorate culture. Her home with Blondie co-founder and guitarist Chris Stein was in the heart of New York’s roughest regions and beset by an unspeakable crime. Meanwhile, out on the streets, murders hit a high of 1690 a year.
Unlike many punk contemporaries who leaned heavily into aggression or nihilism, Blondie balanced the grit of New York’s underground scene with a sense of glamour and pop accessibility. That contrast became one of the band’s greatest strengths, allowing them to bridge the gap between the rawness of punk and the mainstream appeal that would eventually make them global stars.
Thus, it is to be expected that art tackled this and became a little explicit itself. Blondie were all too happy to oblige. This helped to reform culture; as Stein states: “In the cultural context and acceptance, it changes. Not the literal meaning so much, but more of the way of these things stay afloat in consciousness.” The punk revolution borne from the CBGB hub where Blondie earned their stripes became about bold expression and breaking down the taboos of the stilted status quo.
“I think that according to today’s standards there’s practically no holds barred,” Harry told Vulture. “There were moments in the past where we couldn’t do live shows because it was deemed ‘too explicit’. We had one incident like that, and it really meant nothing. Like, my underpants showed onstage.”
Even the rock critics were somewhat misogynistically outraged by this, with Stein commenting, “That was very triggering for Lester Bangs apparently.”
However, the lusty nature of music is commonplace. The panty-exposing performance of ‘The Tide is High’ might have drawn flack back in the day, but Stein comments: “I’ll fucking go to CVS and hear ‘The Tide Is High’ while doing my shopping. So that kind of stuff is something that has evolved.”
It is now accepted that women can also engage in erotic lyricism and what the hell is a flash of cotton among friends! In fact, singing ‘The Tide is High’ in underpants would be considered rather tame.
What once scandalised audiences now feels almost quaint in retrospect, highlighting how dramatically attitudes towards sexuality and performance have shifted in popular culture. Harry’s willingness to push boundaries helped pave the way for future generations of female artists to exercise greater freedom over how they presented themselves onstage and in public life.
But at the time, it was radical. Beyond the music, Harry is undoubtedly a sex symbol, and she was always happy to embrace this bestowment. In fact, she has branded it as a source of power since entering the arts, stating: “I wish I had invented sex,” and “being hot never hurts.”
She even gave her ex-boyfriend Penn Jillette the idea of having his Jacuzzi’s water jets specifically positioned for clitoral stimulation, explaining: “Penn patented the orgasmatron tub. I kept expecting his wife to at least send me flowers.”
