“We were at a crossroads”: the 1999 hit Debbie Harry said America never embraced
Falling out of favour must be one of the most crushing things that can happen to a band, but if you have the willingness to persevere in the name of pop stardom and register a comeback, the sense of elation and relief is arguably even stronger.
For Blondie, they hadn’t exactly been on a lengthy decline towards the end of their initial run as a band, but the muted reception for their sixth album, 1982’s The Hunter, was such a disappointing way for the band to mark their exit on the world. Up until this point, it had been high after high in terms of their popularity, and while they arguably peaked in 1979 with Parallel Lines, there was no real suggestion that it would all come to a grinding halt.
After their split, many fans would have been hoping to see the band make a grand return, but as the years rolled on, it didn’t look likely, with Debbie Harry having embarked on a solo career and other members displaying interests elsewhere.
When they finally announced their comeback 15 years after their initial breakup, nobody was sure if the world would openly accept a band like Blondie in the modern day. However, given how their influence hadn’t died and a new wave of ‘new wave’ was being readily adopted by contemporary acts who were having commercial success, it wasn’t too far-fetched of an idea to suggest that they could mount a second spell in the spotlight.
While it was initially just a live return in 1997, they returned with new music in 1999, releasing their seventh album, No Exit, and preceding it with the single, ‘Maria’. The song became a massive hit in certain parts of the world, earning them the rare feat of being the only American band to achieve a UK number one in the ‘70s, ‘80s and ‘90s, and success began to follow elsewhere.
‘Maria’ would also go on to become something of a phenomenon in Europe, with Spanish audiences lapping up the retro appeal of the song, and there was little doubt that the band had achieved almost everything they could have asked for with their return to the charts, save for one thing that the band were justifiably miffed about.
“It was really big over there because there are many Spanish girls named Maria,” guitarist Chris Stein noted of the song’s success in the European nation during a 2026 interview with Classic Rock, before vocalist Debbie Harry came in with one major disappointment about the song’s reception.
“I think we were at a bit of a crossroads between the European and US markets,” Harry said, noting how the song only managed to scrape its way to number 82 on the Billboard chart. “It always seemed to be something like that for us. Spiritually, ‘Maria’ probably didn’t really fit into a certain genre so much. We were more pop, while the US was more rock at the time. That was usually what was happening to Blondie.”
Given that other similarly-minded acts were having success with the same sound that they had relied on for most of their career, it’s debatable as to whether the US market was bored with the pop sound or whether they were simply not interested in a reunion. However, there are some bands that are never going to die out, and evidently, there will always be an audience for Blondie, just perhaps not in the places you’d expect.
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