Picture This

One of my recent new wave-related musical interests is Blondie. The reason why I originally started listening to Parallel Lines (1978) was that I felt the urge to listen to some famous classic pop (not always those wonderful and mind-blowing indie powerpop bands that no one has ever heard of…).

The album starts with a wonderful version of The Nerves’ Hanging on the Telephone. The rest of the album is equally good. It’s easy to love albums like this: excellent songs from beginning to end, great vocals and playing, beautiful melodies, and some nice powerpop kick-ass feel. Many people would probably regard this music as some sort of punk, but it’s only because they haven’t been introduced to the wonderful concept of power pop... Parallel Lines is power pop (and new wave).

This album is filled with great new wave-style keyboards that I’ve recently learned to love even more than before. Debbie Harry is also one singer master. He sings everything exactly how it’s meant to be sung. She always impresses me with her vocals - be it mysterious like Fade Away and Radiate, extremely beautiful like Pretty Baby, impish like One Way or Another, or just happy and cheerful like I'm Gonna Love You Too.

Other songs worth mentioning are 11:59 that features an amazing organ solo, Picture This that is again very pretty, and the disco classic Heart Of Glass that matches surprisingly good with these new wave power pop tunes.

And, again, I have no idea what Blondie’s other albums are like because I haven’t listened to them yet. I’ll do that when I have time (and when I’ve finished listening to those 100 billion other bands I intend to check out…) On the other hand, everyone seems to think Parallel Lines is Blondie’s best album, and I would say that it really seems good enough to be like any band’s best album.

Blondie on MySpace