FEATURE:
Atomic
Blondie’s Eat to the Beat at Forty-Five
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ON 28th September…
IN THIS PHOTO: Blondie in 1979/PHOTO CREDIT: Maureen Donaldson/GI
Blondie’s fourth studio album, Eat to the Beat, turns forty-five. Arriving a year after the classic Parallel Lines, it is not considered as highly. It is a huge album to live up to! Even so, Eat to the Beat is a wonderful album that we should celebrate. It opens with three of Blondie’s biggest songs: Dreaming, The Hardest Part and Union City Blue. I want to bring in a couple of features and a review for Eat to the Beat. Reaching number one in the U.K., I don’t think that it is fair to say that Eat to the Beat is a pale and lacklustre follow-up to Parallel Lines. That it is nowhere near as impactful and consistent. There is so much to enjoy through Eat to the Beat. I will end with a positive review from the BBC. Last year, Udiscovermusic talked about Blondie serving up a New Wave classic. Proving that they had ammunition and plenty of ideas after Parallel Lines. Not repeating themselves, the New York City band moved in a new direction. Their music did not suffer because of it:
“With their pop credentials firmly established, Blondie entered the studio ready to prove they could turn their hand to anything. Yet for all its stylistic carousing, Eat To The Beat provides a uniform listen thanks to the way it soundtracks a fantasy New York City of yellow taxis, wasted decadence, and bright-lights hunger with an exotic chic that, naturally, appealed to the group’s eagerly awaiting UK fanbase. Taking a cue from the ferocity of the group’s earliest outings, the title track is a sharp slice of Blondie’s patented pop-punk, while the likes of “Union City Blue” conjures the sort of romantic yearning you only ever get from finding yourself adrift in a city where anything can happen.
Switching styles with ease, opener “Dreaming” found the group at their most unashamedly bombastic, before offering a masterclass in street-smart punk-funk strutting, courtesy of “The Hardest Part.” Elsewhere, Eat To The Beat saw Blondie make their first notable foray into reggae, with “Die Young Stay Pretty” nodding towards “The Tide Is High” (which would top the charts on both sides of the Atlantic in 1980), while the hedonistic rush of “Atomic” was a perfectly calibrated export of New York City’s disco scene.
Often overlooked in favor of its big-hitting predecessor, Eat To The Beat had more bite than people remember, and went platinum in both the US and the UK. With the group at their most ambitious, they also created a promo video for each of the album’s 12 songs, further cementing the album as an unofficial Big Apple soundtrack while creating the world’s first video album in the process”.
In 2019, Ultimate Classic Rock spotlighted an eclectic follow-up to one of the greatest albums ever. There must have been a sense of pressure and expectation on Blondie’s shoulders. The fact people did not have to wait long between albums took away some of that anxiety and delay. They launched in with an album that contains more than its fair share of gems. Debbie Harry’s songwriting especially strong and impactful. An incredible talent leading one of the world’s best bands. You can hear shades of Eat to the Beat in albums that followed it in 1979:
“After its release in fall 1978, Parallel Lines shot up the charts, reaching No. 1 in the U.K. and the Top 10 in the U.S. thanks to the powerhouse appeal of the single "Heart of Glass," which went to No. 1 across the planet, including the U.S. The song added another influence to the band's range of musical interests, among them disco, which was at its peak after the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack dominated radio, the charts and pop culture the past year.
So, when the six-member Blondie, led by singer Debbie Harry, entered the studio in their hometown of New York City as spring turned to summer in 1979, they pretty much followed the template of the record that rocketed them to stardom the previous year. That meant some New Wave, a little pop, a throwback or two to their punk roots and, of course, more disco. And then they took it even further.
Harry, who co-wrote eight of the new album's songs, was thrust into the spotlight following Parallel Lines' success. She became the focal point of the group and was often characterized by unknowing Top 40 fans as a solo artist named Blondie. Even though their publicity department stressed the issue -- going as far as declaring "Blondie is a band" in press releases -- getting casual music fans who knew them from only "Heart of Glass" to acknowledge there were five other people making the music was often an uphill battle.
When they reconvened in the studio to make Eat to the Beat, Blondie were still working hard on that band dynamic. All six members contributed songs to the album in one form or another and, along with returning producer Mike Chapman, were determined to not rest on Parallel Lines' laurels. Eat to the Beat sounds like a follow-up, but not a sequel. And that's no small achievement.
In turn, Eat to the Beat, which came out in October 1979, was the next step in their evolution. A small step, but an integral part of Blondie's story. As producer Chapman noted in the album's 2001 reissue, tensions were high during the recording, stemming from increased drug use among various members. But Harry also began to assume more control, outlining a vision for the album that included the usual mix of pop, punk, disco, New Wave and even R&B-inflected songs.
The result was one of Blondie's greatest albums, led by the sugary rush of lead single "Dreaming," which climbed into the Top 40. Eat to the Beat doesn't waste much time from there: Two of its best songs, "The Hardest Part" and "Union City Blue," quickly follow. But the LP saves its most perfect moment for the middle of Side Two.
That's when "Atomic" shows up. The song shuffles together pop, New Wave and disco, and features a defining spaghetti western-style guitar line played by Chris Stein that's tossed into the mix with everything else. It also spotlights one of Harry's greatest vocals to that point, a strong, confident performance that showed just how far she and the band had come since 1976's self-titled debut.
The song went to No. 1 in the U.K. but barely cracked the Top 40 in Blondie's home country, stalling at No. 39. The album fared similarly, making it to No. 1 overseas but reaching No. 17 in the U.S. Still, it was a triumph for the band, whose melting-pot approach to music made them one of the most adventurous acts of the era.
The next year they scored the biggest song of their career with "Call Me," the no-doubt-about-it disco smash from the American Gigolo soundtrack that stayed at No. 1 for eight weeks. They followed that up with two more No. 1 singles: a cover of the reggae song "The Tide Is High" and "Rapture," the first chart-topper to include a rap.
The genre-jumping started long before Parallel Lines gave way to Eat to the Beat. But these two classic albums set a steady course for the future for both the band and '80s music in general. Their influence, even today, guide the career of any artist who refuses to be pigeonholed and restricted in their music. Blondie, as always, were just doing what came naturally”.
I actually will finish up with two reviews. I will come to the BBC one I mentioned earlier. Perhaps a more raw and eclectic listen than Parallel Lines, many critics noted how the lyrics on Eat to the Beat were more fatalist. A departure from their previous album, it was an impressive and quick evolution that works really well through the album:
“By 1979 Debbie Harry, Chris Stein and co. had realised their true potential. Forsaking pure rock for more diverse palette, Blondie's plan of attack now involved willfully grabbing at any passing style (as long as it could be termed 'pop') and making it their own. In this Eat To The Beat emulated and expanded on the platinum-selling Parallel Lines' formula.
Behind all this was, again, the genius (and superhuman levels of attention to detail, spending hours listening to playbacks at eardrum bursting volume) of bubblegum producer, Mike Chapman. He may have recognised in Blondie the ability to be moulded like the Sweet, Mud and all his other RAK creations at the beginning of the 70s, yet the band was equally responsible for this chart assault - writing the material that fitted Chapman's vision. One look at the credits shows exactly how democratic a place Blondie was to be as a band member. Everyone gets a mention at some point.
Maybe this accounts for the stylistic ragbag that emerges. Eat To The Beat still bears the traces of the art punk roots that had given birth to them back in their CBGB's days in New York (on the title track, the manic Accidents Never Happen and Living In The Real World); but at times the album reads like a veritable history of chart styles: Here was their first proper foray into reggae with Die Young Stay Pretty, the Duane Eddy-at-the-disco grandeur of Atomic, the skittering, Spectorish pure pop of Dreaming and Union City Blue and the Motown stomp of Slow Motion. Sound-A-Sleep goes even further back into the kind of 50s dream pop that might feature in a David Lynch film.
Americans, still hamstrung by the double-edged values of the late 60s, were always suspicious that a band first marketed as 'new wave' could be so mercenary and saw it as ersatz 'selling out', giving the album a lukewarm reception. Meanwhile in Europe their ability to soundtrack every great disco, wedding and barmitzvah was rightly valued. In the end, pop is pop and Blondie, at this point, were making the timeless variety that still sounds box fresh today”.
I am going to end things with a 1983 review from Rolling Stone. A deep and incisive review of the tremendous Eat to the Beat. Even though Blondie couldn’t quite keep the momentum and magic of Eat to the Beat alive for their 1980 follow-up, Autoamerican, that album still has many highlights. I have a very soft spot for Eat to the Beat. Atomic is a classic that is the equal of anything they have ever produced. The band sound fresh and connected throughout. It is important that we remember and discuss Eat to the Beat:
“With each LP, Blondie has updated their musical mosaic by assimilating another chunk of pop history. Plastic Letters added touches of neopsychedelic electronics to the mock-girl-group sound of the band’s debut. The repackaging and refinements of last year’s Parallel Lines helped reduce Blondie’s we-know-better-now perspective from the larger-than-life campiness of their early work to a subtler, eyebrow-raised irony: a level of detachment perfectly calculated to let the group play it both ways with a discofied song like “Heart of Glass.”
Smart, smirky and elating as those albums were, they had the unsatisfying feel of schoolwork turned in by a brilliant dilettante whose greatest effort went toward maintaining a stance of noncommittal, deathless cool that guarded against expectations while holding back energy for a future, more worthy challenge.
Alone among the bands that emerged from the mid-Seventies New York punk-club circuit, Blondie has always regarded success as necessary, well deserved and inevitable. You got the feeling that if Deborah Harry and Chris Stein didn’t become famous as rock stars, they’d gain fame as something else.
With Eat to the Beat, all that smug certainty has been vindicated. Faced with the challenge of following up the million-selling Parallel Lines, Blondie has delivered a record that’s not only ambitious in its range of styles, but also unexpectedly and vibrantly compelling without sacrificing any of the group’s urbane, modish humor. As if to distinguish Blondie from the pop revival they helped catalyze, Eat to the Beat subjugates melody to momentum: in their construction and in Mike Chapman’s dense, crystalline production, most of the tracks are organized around Clem Burke’s superb drumming. The new LP is — purposefully, I think — less overtly hooky than Parallel Lines, exchanging that album’s cool self-possession for an engaging neuroticism. If hooks are the small revelations of rock & roll, then the beat is its obsession.
Blondie’s obsession here is with dreams and distance — the band’s usual themes, now suddenly personalized by its own success. Like a comedian who outlasts and outclasses the subjects of his impressions, the group itself has become a pop image as powerful as any it can invoke. Blondie has invariably recognized the resonances that stardom has from without: Jimmy Destri’s “Fan Mail” on Plastic Letters captures perfectly the lightheaded devotion of hero-worship. Now they’re comparing perspectives. Without ever approaching a music-biz cliché, Eat to the Beat explores the nagging paradoxes of success — like the way it imposes distance between you and your surroundings, your memories and your dreams. Or the contrast between internal and external transformation, means and ends, recognition and risk taking.
“Dreaming” makes the keynote statement. Burke’s drums roll in and out like the inexorable pounding of breakers on the beach, nearly drowning out Stein’s twangy, Beatles-style guitar riff and the keening, insistent reiteration of the six-note refrain. Harry’s voice emerges in smooth peals, as if she’s found a place for herself beyond the waves:
Reel to reel is living rarity
People stop and stare at me
We just walk on by
We just keep on dreaming.
Holding private thought so dear raises the ante on fantasies: the dreams played out on Eat to the Beat are all high-stakes dramas. The throbbing, witty “The Hardest Part” weds — not for the first time — sexual and financial fantasy (“No short heist/No overnight/Big money/Take it to Brazil”), while “Union City Blue” evokes life-or-death romance. Mixed with the intertwined-guitars-and-keyboards density of “Dreaming,” “Union City Blue” has the force of an incantation. Key words — power, passion — slip out with a resonant urgency. Harry’s finally using her sweet tones to create real emotional intensity.
Eat to the Beat shows off Deborah Harry’s increasing pleasure in her craft — the histrionic screeching of “Victor” must have been fun — as well as her incredible improvement as a stylist. (The record’s only dud is “Sound-a-Sleep,” an insomniac’s lullaby with artificial crooning à la Doris Day.) It’s exhilarating to hear her give thematic depth to the contrast between “Shayla” and the title tune; her wordless, whippoorwill vocals in the former do more to convey the apotheosis of an ex-working girl (it could be Harry’s own story) than do all of Stein’s banal, “cosmic energy” lyrics. If “Shayla” is about arriving, the careening, jumping “Eat to the Beat” makes the route explicit — you travel to the top, toes tapping, by way of a lot of rock & roll street corners. Alternately petulant and gleeful, Harry flings lyrics around like a prizefighter.
In “Accidents Never Happen” and “Die Young Stay Pretty” (the latter a carousel reggae number with mock-steel-drum punctuation), the band enumerates constraining real-world pressures and expectations. In search of blessed predictability (“… in a perfect world/Complications disappear”), Blondie finds only the time clocks of mortality and the media. With “Atomic,” meanwhile, they deflect some of these expectations by going the steely irony of “Heart of Glass” one better. By uniting a Ventures guitar line, a pulsing Eurodisco synthesizer and cascading female harmonies with some deliberately facile lyrics (“Your hair is beautiful …/Atomic me tonight”), the group smoothly rewrites sexual clichés.
Eat to the Beat comes full circle with “Living in the Real World.” A giddy, raveup response to “Dreaming,” it’s about the frenzied scuffling — no holds barred — in your head when your body’s keeping pace with a world that’s become the dream of success. With a pout that sounds like she’s eating jujubes, Deborah Harry romps through Jimmy Destri’s glib, wide-eyed lyric: “I can be whoever I want to/I talk to me/I even agree.” Her overdubbed, cheerleader-style shriek of “I’m not living!” builds the song to a climax that — like so much of the LP — sweeps you along with its heady solipsism. For Blondie, it seems, the most compelling dreams are the ones you’ve already seen come true”.
On 28th September, Eat to the Beat turns forty-five. I am not sure if there will be any commemoration or anything special planned. The fourth album from Blondie, many compare it to and judge it on the strength of Parallel Lines. That is not fair! Eat to the Beat is its own album and should be heralded! Maybe not their very best album, Eat to the Beat should not be ignored or seen as less. Instead, it is this huge and amazing album filled with richness. Ahead of its anniversary go and check it out. Blondie’s 1979 album is…
TRULY atomic.