Today’s classic song from the late ’70s of the day is “Heart of Glass” by Blondie. Released in January of 1979, this danceable little number went to #1 on both the Billboard Hot 100 and Cash Box Top 100. (Surprisingly for a dance tune, it only hit #58 on Billboard’s Disco chart.) It was also a number-one hit in Australia, Austria, Canada, New Zealand, Switzerland, and the UK.
“Heart of Glass” was written by Debbie Harry and Chris Stein, the band’s singer and lead guitarist, respectively. They came up with the song in 1974 or so, under the title of “Once I Had a Love.” That version of the song, inspired by the Hues Corporation’s “Rock the Boat,” was slower with a funkier and more pronounced sixteenth-note disco beat.
The group rerecorded the tune, under the “Heart of Glass” title, in 1978. This version added Giorgio Moroder-influenced electronic Euro disco flavoring to drummer Clem Burke’s four-on-the-floor with chirpy hi-hat upbeats beat. It was a winner.
The rerecorded track featured a bevy of then relatively new synthesizers, including the Roland SH-5 and Minimoog, as well as a Roland CR-78 drum machine. Debbie Harry explained how the band stumbled onto the drum machine:
“Chris [Stein] and Jimmy [Destri, the band’s keyboardist] were always going over to 47th Street where all the music stores were, and one day they came back with this little rhythm box, which went ‘tikka tikka tikka’… And the rest is history!”
Chris Stein elaborates on how they incorporated the drum machine with Clem Burke’s live drumming:
“It was Jimmy who brought in the drum machine and a synthesizer. Synchronizing them was a big deal at the time. It all had to be done manually, with every note and beat played in real time rather than looped over.“
Debbie Harry explains how they got the title for the song:
“At first, the song kept saying: ‘Once I had a love, it was a gas. Soon turned out, it was a pain in the ass.’ We couldn’t keep saying that, so we came up with: ‘Soon turned out, had a heart of glass.’ We kept one ‘pain in the ass’ in—and the BBC bleeped it out for radio.”
“Heart of Glass” was the biggest track on Blondie’s 1978 Parallel Lines album. It was the first of four number-one songs for the group; the others were “Call Me” (1980), “The Tide is High” (1980), and “Rapture” (1981). As you can tell, the band refused to be boxed into a single sound or genre; those songs are all over the place, style-wise. That musical variety, along with Debbie Harry’s distinctive vocals, helped the group attain near-iconic status. They were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2006.
And here’s today’s bonus video of the day, Blondie’s pre-MTV music video for “Heart of Glass.” Those of us of a certain age watched this one over and over back in the day. (Tell me—doesn’t Debbie Harry have a little bit of a Marilyn Monroe thing going in this video?)
