Legendary front woman: platinum blonde and never tired: Debbie Harry is 80

Once she came to round in New York as a waitress, then the scene and later the world career began. Today Debbie Harry, the singer of the successful band Blondie, is 80 years old. With her bandmates, the legendary platinum blonde front woman has already planned the next album.

Harry, born in 1945 as Angela Trimble, became the face of the New York punk and new wave scene in the 1970s. As a co -founder of Blondie, she shaped the sound of an entire generation with a mixture of punk, pop, reggae and disco. The band became world famous with hits like “Heart of Glass”, “Call Me” and “The Tide is High” and sold over 40 million albums.

From the waiter to the scene darling

Harry began her career in New York in the 1960s, where she sang wind in the Willows in the band, among others, while making a living as a waitress. In the New York underground music scene, she met Chris Stein-in 1974 they founded Blondie together and also became a couple. The band quickly became a scene fief by appearances in the legendary CBGB in Manhattaner East Village. The international breakthrough achieved in 1978 with the album “Parallel Lines”.

The band’s sound was cross -genre. Blondie combined catchy melodies with a rocky attitude and stylistic openness. Harry’s striking voice and charismatic presence shaped her hits, in which danceable rhythms meet cool irony. Blondie managed to make alternative music styles suitable for the mass and always remained idiosyncratic and innovative.

In 1982 Blondie took a break when Stein fell seriously ill. Harry retired to take care of him and later started a solo career with albums such as “Kookoo” and “Rockbird”. In the 1990s, the reunification of Blondie, who have published several albums since then, regularly went on tour and landed a surprising further world hit with “Maria”. In 2006 the band was included in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

In addition to the music, Harry participated in numerous films and TV series. She was also committed to artist rights in the streaming age. Her autobiography “Face IT” was released in 2019 and also contained personal revelations about her past. Among other things, she described her first heroin consumption in the book as “bewildering and delightful” and described how David Bowie is said to have once shown her his well-proportioned penis.

The very wild times are over, but Harry is still in the studio. “I always imagined a career that has not ended after five years,” she once said in an interview. And even at 80, she apparently wants to keep Blondie innovative: For the album expected this year, the band hired the Grammy-crowned producer John Congleton, which experts evaluate as an indication of a modern, experimental sound.