Heart Of Glass

Blondie members Debbie Harry and Chris Stein (who were later married) wrote the first version of this song in early 1974, shortly after they first met. They didn't have a proper title for the song, and would refer to it as "The Disco Song." Harry explained on the show Words and Music: "Lyrically, it was about a stalker who was pursuing me, and Chris saved me from him."

It wasn't until they recorded this song in 1978 that Stein came up with the title "Heart Of Glass." He didn't know that it was also the title of a 1976 German movie directed by Werner Herzog.

According to Rolling Stone magazine's Top 500 Songs, Harry and Stein wrote the song in their dingy New York apartment and keyboardist Jimmy Destri provided the synthesizer hook. The result brought punk and disco together on the dance floor. Said Destri, "Chris always wanted to do Disco. We used to do Heart Of Glass to upset people."

Debbie Harry (from 1000 UK #1 Hits by Jon Kutner and Spencer Leigh: "When we did Heart Of Glass it wasn't too cool in our social set to play Disco. But we did it because we wanted to be uncool. It was based around a Roland Rhythm Machine and the backing took over 10 hours to get down." Chris Stein added, "We didn't expect the onginal to be that big. We only did it as a novelty item to put more diversity into the album."

Blondie re-recorded this in 1978 in a Reggae style, but their producer Mike Chapman suggested Reggae didn't sell in America. As Harry and Stein had a fascination with the Disco sound that was then sweeping the country, so they adopted a sound that was an amalgamation of their new wave background and Euro Disco.

An early version of this song called "Once I Had a Love (aka The Disco Song)" was included in the 2001 reissue of the Parallel Lines album.

The video for this song showed the band performing it in an empty discotheque, and was very popular, thanks to the many close-ups of Debbie Harry. Blondie was one of the few American bands that made videos in the years before MTV. They did so because they were very popular in Australia and Europe, and by producing videos, they could be featured on shows in those continents when they couldn't travel there.

The sound of the CR-78 drum machine was merged with that of drummer Clem Burke's real drums. Burke took his inspiration from the groove of one of his favorite songs - The Bee Gee's "Stayin Alive."

The song's lyric turns the traditional heartbreak theme on its head. Debbie Harry explained in Q magazine: "I was tired of hearing girl singers write or sing about being beaten by love. So I said, Well listen, there are also a lot of girls who just walk away."