
Monday, March 27, 2006
Blondie - Parallel Lines
Blondie turned to British pop producer Mike Chapman for their third album, on which they
abandoned any pretensions to new wave legitimacy (just in time, given the decline of the new wave) and emerged as a pure pop band. But it wasn't just Chapman that made Parallel Lines Blondie's best album; it was the band's own songwriting, including Deborah Harry, Chris Stein, and James Destri's "Picture This," and Harry and Stein's "Heart of Glass," and Harry and new bass player Nigel Harrison's "One Way or Another," plus two contributions from nonbandmember Jack Lee, "Will Anything Happen?" and "Hanging on the Telephone." That was enough to give Blondie a number one on both sides of the Atlantic with "Heart of Glass" and three more U.K. hits, but what impresses is the album's depth and consistency -- album tracks like "Fade Away and Radiate" and "Just Go Away" are as impressive as the songs pulled for singles. The result is state-of-the-art pop/rock circa 1978, with Harry's tough-girl glamour setting the pattern that would be exploited over the next decade by a host of successors led by Madonna.

Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Popular Posts of the Week
-
Family Origins Hendrix was born Johnny Allen Hendrix in Seattle, Washington, the son of Al Hendrix and Lucille Jeter Hendrix. His father,...
-
History They originally called themselves The Reactionaries , with additional band member and singer Martin Tamburovich. According to Watt, ...
-
You don't really see that I share a lot of 80s on this blog. I am always so confused by the era, not really implying it's pretenti...
-
First Anniversary Of Modern Music Blog A year passed either well or badly. This week of last year, i made a decision to share my musical tho...
-
Tenacious D is the debut album of the comedy rock duo Jack Black and Kyle Gass. For their first album, they enlisted the help of drummer Da...
-
The Jam spent much of the next two years touring. They were not very successful with their U.S. shows, for some of which they were the openi...
-
To say that Warner/Rhino/Sire's 2006 four-CD, one-DVD box set Pirate Radio is for the die-hard Pretenders fan may be stating the obviou...
3 COMMENTS:
great Thanks
Great ThankS
Nice Thanks
Post a Comment