Parallel Lines (1978)

With the black and white stripes setting a motif on the album cover art, and the skinny ties and sneakers on all the players except glamour girl Deborah Harry, and its equal bows to punk-rock (more embodied in the history of the band), farfisa-driven garage-rock ("11:59"), and disco ("Heart of Glass")—not to mention the lively pop of all its songs from track to track—Parallel Lines in many ways is the quintessential New Wave album. (And when, I wonder, did I begin to capitalize the term? I used to abhor it when "Rolling Stone" magazine did so back in the '70s and '80s.) It still sounds surprisingly good to this day, although it's arguable that's because I waited so many years for this day to roll around again. I virtually wore it out in its time, hearing it first (of course) in a record store where it sounded like the best goddam thing I had ever heard in my life. For whatever reasons I tended to favor the first side over the second—listening to the whole thing again it seems to me now pretty much seamless from start to finish. Once again the mysteries of the New York punk-rock bands of the mid- and late '70s must be registered: nothing here is anything like '78 releases by the Ramones, Patti Smith, Talking Heads, or Television, which in turn are nothing like one another. Blondie was typically derided as the sellout of the bunch, and it's not hard to see why—the glamour chick, the verse-chorus-verse approach (though no one matched the Ramones in that department, and Talking Heads were no slouches there either). Plus they actually had hits, so in that regard mission accomplished. Me, I have no particular problem with melodic songwriting that concerns itself with relationship foibles, so the sellout aspect was never going to be a deal-breaker for me. But it's interesting how tastes shift about. In that long-ago record-store day it was "Fade Away and Radiate" that sealed it for me; now that seems like positively the least interesting thing here. "Pretty Baby," the song that was playing as I made my purchase, now seems more likely to be the best thing here, certainly on the first side. The second side, maybe because I listened to it less back then, overflows with little pleasures: the "Batman" dynamics of "Will Anything Happen?," the lovely lilt and spidery constructions of "Sunday Girl," and of course the formidable "Heart of Glass," their greatest hit. It's all here, just waiting for the memories to be made and remade, lived and relived.

"Heart of Glass" (1979)

77. Blondie, "Heart of Glass" (March 17, 1979, #1)

Another heinous sellout of epic proportions, once again producing results that only the most hardened could object to. In this case, it is New York punk-rock scenesters Blondie dabbling in the dread disco and dancing their way to the top of the charts, incidentally inventing a neat counterpoint to the Rolling Stones' "Heart of Stone" (and maybe Neil Young's "Heart of Gold" too), which others have used elsewhere to good effect. The song actually started life in 1975 as a reggae number called "Once I Had a Love," which is frankly hard for me to imagine. As reconfigured a scant few years later, with producer Mike Chapman given his head at the board, it's one of the smoothest, slickest productions to emerge from the heyday of disco, as glistening and sleek and cool as the material that provides its name. The four-on-the-floor is thankfully understated (but there, oh there), the little guitar flicks almost tender, and the backing vocals positively meditative. It's the swirling layers of keyboards and the ethereal vocals from Deborah Harry that do most of the heavy lifting. The groove is so fine that this is one of those rare dance songs whose mixes can be judged by their length, i.e., longer better. Longer longer better better. Longer longer longer better better better. I'm not sure what I can add. It's good to dance to? Sometimes I think I might be getting a little tired of it, but often a change in setting, hearing it somewhere that surprises me—such as, these days, an elevator—can revive all its charms for me in an instant. Maybe that sounds like damning with faint praise, but that doesn't mean it's not a damn fine song.