Fifty years ago in 1974, Debbie Harry and Chris Stein formed Blondie in New York from the ashes of their previous and very forgettable group: the Stilettoes. It was an effort of love between the two but for Harry it also allowed her alter ego to express itself to the world.

Stating in her 2019 memoirs “Face It” she says that in the band she was acting out a role, “I was saying things in songs that female singers didn’t really say back then. I wasn’t submissive or begging him to come back, I was kicking his ass, kicking him out, kicking my own ass too. My Blondie character was an inflatable doll but with a dark, provocative, aggressive side. I was playing it up yet I was very serious.”

The group has released 11 studio albums to date including their 1978 Parallel Lines which reached no. 6 on the U.S. charts and no. 1 in the U.K. The album included their no. 1 smash hit Heart of Glass, a universal lament of unrequited love.

Source: Blondie.net. Face It.  Graphic: Blondie, 1977, no known copyright.