Blondie's Parallel Lines

Blondie's ParallelLines mixed punk, disco and radio-friendly FM rock with nostalgic influencesfrom 1960s pop and girl group hits. This 1978 album kept one foot plantedfirmly in the past while remaining quite forward-looking, an impulse that canbe heard in its electronic dance music hit "Heart of Glass." Bubblegum musicmaven Mike Chapman produced ParallelLines, which was the first massive hit by a group from the CBGB punk underworld.By embracing the diversity of New York City's varied music scenes, Blondieembodied many of the tensions that played out at the time between fans ofdisco, punk, pop and mainstream rock.

Debbie Harry's campy glamor and sassy snarl shook up therock'n'roll boy's club during a growing backlash against the women's and gayliberation movements, which helped fuel the "disco sucks" battle cry in thelate 1970s. Despite disco's roots in a queer, black and Latino undergroundscene that began in downtown New York, punk is usually celebrated by criticsand scholars as the quintessentialsubculture. This book challenges the conventional wisdom that dismissed discoas fluffy prefab schlock while also recuperating punk's unhip pop influences, revealinghow these two genres were more closely connected than most people assume. Even Blondie'salbum title, Parallel Lines, evokes the parallel development of punk anddisco--along with their eventual crossover into the mainstream.