Every Saturday, Paste will be revisiting albums that came out before the magazine was founded in July 2002 and assessing its current cultural relevance. This week, we’re looking at Blondie’s follow-up to their magnum opus, a gutsy project that explored every genre from disco to reggae in a confection of sweet, poppy delight.
To this day, I fight with people over whether Blondie is a band or just Debbie Harry. It’s a hilarious argument that I can permanently shut down by playing “Atomic”—a song that would be incomplete without the slick seduction of Frank Infante and Chris Stein’s guitars, the relentless percussion from “Lord of the Fills” Clem Burke, the rhythmic lows of Nigel Harrison and, of course, the finesse of the song’s co-writer and band’s keyboardist, Jimmy Destri. As a fellow blonde myself, I tend to place all my attention on Harry and her magnetic presence, but Eat to the Beat would have never caught fire without the five other members of Blondie crafting the foundation for her to put an enchanting spell on.
Critics and fans are constantly pitting Blondie’s albums against each other. Both Plastic Letters and Eat to the Beat are vilified as failed recreations of their lauded predecessors (Blondie and Parallel Lines, respectively), yet Eat to the Beat refined the pop-rock sound the band introduced on Parallel Lines while also ambitiously mapping every genre from disco to reggae in a confection of sweet, poppy delight. It had the guts to explore outside the prominent genres of the time, including a lullaby and reggae amongst their beloved new wave pop rock. Eat to the Beat is bold and maybe a little ludicrous, but that kind of fearlessness is what I love most about Blondie.
I picture the record as the subdued, voguish older sister of Parallel Lines who, for all its brazen firepower, can never quite replicate the quiet cool of Eat to the Beat. That’s not to say I am discounting Parallel Lines as Blondie’s masterpiece; I’m just saying they occupy different booths in the same club. Eat to the Beat is leaning against a wall, smoking a cigarette, decked out in leather and wearing sunglasses inside the dimly lit club for no reason other than mystery; Parallel Lines is tearing up the stage with gutsy confidence in a shimmering mini dress with the tallest platform boots she could find. You need both to fill the whole thing out.
Eat to the Beat was the second installment in the Mike Chapman—an Australian pop record producer known best for his work with Blondie, the Sweet, Suzi Quatro and Mud—era of Blondie. Though Harry was initially skeptical about Chapman’s inclusion—even going as far as to state plainly, “[Blondie] were New York. [He] was L.A.”—he brought an urgency to that mimicked the snappy energy Blondie was trying to siphon from their favorite city and weave into their fourth record. He honed in on what made Parallel Lines so adored and upped the dramatics for Eat to the Beat.
On Eat to the Beat, all six band members got involved with writing, with Harry and Stein racking up most of the writer’s credits. Their concerted efforts lent to the eclectic mix of genres across the album, but that was almost a Blondie staple at that point in their career. Things weren’t all rosy in the studio, even with such a communal output. In a sleeve note on the remastered 2001 version of the album, Chapman divulged that he couldn’t quite understand what Harry was trying to capture with her “Eat to the Beat” aesthetic. He also said that, once drugs found their way into the studio, things became more jumbled and chaotic—confessing that, retrospectively, he isn’t sure if it’s a grand expansion of the sound they created on Parallel Lines or a slice of the drug-fueled snake pit they devolved into. Whatever the process was, it managed to sculpt an unapologetically New York and blisteringly entertaining Blondie classic.
The critical reception of Eat to the Beat was mixed: The U.S.’s response was lukewarm, but the U.K. fans and critics were taken with Blondie’s ability to effortlessly dance across genres while maintaining an infectious pop twist. It seems like Americans were too keen on a flawless follow-up to Parallel Lines to find the magic in Eat to the Beat’s boundless experimentation. But not only was Eat to the Beat experimental musically with its genre-blending, but Blondie became the first rock band ever to produce a video album concurrently with a record, creating a music video for each of the album’s 12 songs—further cementing the record’s identity in the New York City skyline. The sounds of the city are weaved throughout each track, placing you in the misty streets of Manhattan, crammed in a smokey jazz club and the bustle of subway chaos. Eat to the Beat is the comprehensive soundtrack of the unavoidable push and pull of juvenile fatalism and idealism.
Eat to the Beat cascades into bubblegum pop bliss with “Dreaming,” reviving the esoteric spirit of the Shangri-Las while maintaining a fanciful aura of naivety. There’s even a cheeky namedrop of one of Blondie’s most criminally under-appreciated tracks from Parallel Lines when Harry sings, “Fade away, radiate.” I’m unsure if the recursivity was a by-product of their booming success or just another idiosyncratic Blondie tendency. Drifting out of the shimmering melodies, Blondie delivers what I believe to be the first white funk song put to tape—or at least the first enjoyable one (sorry, Wild Cherry). “The Hardest Part” kicks off with a funky bassline chugging along throughout the track as Burke’s skillful percussion drives the rhythm, leading into an iconic riff from Stein, who holds down the rest of the track with some nasty, syncopated guitar riffs. The departure in their poppy new wave sound was a daring risk that paid off, giving us one of Blondie’s most unique tracks in their entire catalog.
The self-referentialism persists on “Union City Blue,” written by Harry about her time on the set of the 1980 film Union City—the first of many starring roles for the multi-talented artist. She drew on her youth in New Jersey and compounded it with the neo-noir setting of Union City, materializing in the sweeping, anthemic track that captured the bittersweet yearning of downtown love. The maladaptive daydreaming continues with another cosmically hooky tune in “Shayla,” as the titular character longs for a life away from the mundane reality of factory work and looks to the stars—literally and figuratively—for an escape. “Shayla turned to run away / To leave in peace and end her stay / Years of fear were in her way / Lost in space, and down she came,” Harry croons, telling us that Shayla’s dreams didn’t turn out exactly as she hoped. Once again, we are stuck in a cycle of optimism and cynicism.
Blondie’s punk roots make an appearance on the title track that rips right through the calm “Shayla” lulled us into, but not without a quirky twist in a harmonica solo. That’s right, this album truly has everything. Maybe I’m a sucker for absurdity, or perhaps the volatility of this record just captures the unpredictability of New York that it feels right. We slip back into familiar new wave territory for “Accidents Never Happen,” which features Lorna Luft, one of Judy Garland’s daughters, but then quickly diverge back into the unknown for the reggae-influenced “Die Young Stay Pretty,” which, although unproven, I’m convinced is the sole impetus for No Doubt, so let’s just say we have Debbie Harry to thank for “Just A Girl.”
Eat to the Beat settles back in with the aptly named “Slow Motion,” which brings back in the ‘60s girl group sound and some killer tambourine leading into arguably my favorite Blondie track ever, “Atomic.” The opening riff that feels ripped straight out of a Wild West gunslinging showdown warms my Texan heart, though it feels a bit more Spaghetti Western than rootin’-tootin’—that’s reserved for the harmonica on “Eat to the Beat.” There is something so addictive about the way Harry drops her voice to deliver the nominal “Atomic.” For all the postmodernist musings the song’s title evokes, the lyrics are essentially meaningless. Chapman once again put his stamp on this track when he prompted the stinging bass solo in a daze about the predetermined arrangement while recording. Harrison is convinced you can hear him shouting for the solo in the track if you listen hard enough. “Atomic” is a signifier for everything Blondie is: bold, cutting edge and New Age-y.
U-turning to the serene, Harry then croons the lullaby of the city that never sleeps with “Sound-A-Sleep.” “Insomnia, no sleep disease,” she sings in a familiar cry to the over-thinkers and nocturnal spirits. The album is closed out by the sonorous “Victor” and the punky “Living in the Real World.” The city is waking back up after a night of restless sleep with thumping drums, shrieking guitars and deafening vocals. “Victor” marches along to the beat of a forbidden Cold War romance of a man living a double life. “Living in the Real World” reflects on the harsh reality of “Shayla” (“You will never ever walk on the moon, leave your body and float through the room”) and is the perfect bookend to the idealized optimism of “Dreaming” (“I can do anything at all / I’m invisible, and I’m 20 feet tall”). Eat to the Beat may not be Blondie’s magnum opus, but its ceaseless individuality and gritty fearlessness make for a perfect portal to a turn-of-the-decade New York City.