Rarely has an album been met with less enthusiasm upon its creation than Autoamerican, the 1980 album by Blondie that was their fifth LP. How then do you account for the fact the album would become their one of their biggest commercial successes, providing two of the four No. 1 hits they released in their careers?
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The naysayers, which mostly included critics and their record label, didn’t seem to like the album’s ambition in switching genres from song to song. But the public ate it up. Here’s how Blondie stuck it to the doubters with Autoamerican.
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People who expected Blondie to stick to straightforward rock and roll weren’t listening all that closely to what they’ve done throughout their career. They’ve always incorporated a variety of influences into a sound that then became uniquely their own. New wave was the category into which they were most roughly lumped, but that didn’t gibe with the fact their first No. 1 single, “Heart of Glass,” was pure disco.
When Blondie started the process of putting Autoamerican together, they were one of the biggest bands in the planet. In the previous 12-month period, they’d delivered their first two No. 1 singles (“Heart of Glass” and “Call Me”). They had emerged from their origins as CBGB scenesters to become a tight instrumental and songwriting outfit (which came from multiple group members), capable of wooing the mainstream without straying too far from the rawness of their New York City roots.
But straying is what they did on Autoamerican, at least in terms of location, as they recorded the album in the sunny climes of Southern California. While not quite a concept album, the record certainly possessed touches that made it work as a piece that should be imbibed from start to finish. Opening track “Europa,” with its orchestration and narration from Debbie Harry, certainly hinted at a bigger idea behind it all.
That bigger idea seemed to be a willingness to try anything over the 11 songs to follow. Disco and reggae had been tackled by the band on a previous album, so that wasn’t all that surprising. But songs like the show-tuney “Here’s Looking at You” and after-hours jazzy “Faces” hearkened back to much earlier eras. Blondie also became the first rock band to incorporate hip-hop on “Rapture,” and they closed out the album with cover of a song (“Follow Me”) from the Broadway musical Camelot.
Critics pounced, including Rolling Stone, which gave the album a ruthless one-star (out of five) review. This was only after Blondie had to battle their record label (Chrysalis) just to release Autoamerican, since the execs didn’t hear any hits. To say Blondie had the last laugh would be an understatement.
Revisiting Autoamerican
Here’s the thing about this record: It’s not all wild, stylistic detours. There are plenty of songs that deliver what you might call the typical Blondie sound, that sugar-rush amalgam driven by Chris Stein’s spy-movie guitars, Clem Burke’s ripping drums, and Debbie Harry’s vocals, half ethereal sighs and half no-BS truth telling.
Songs like “Angels on the Balcony” and “T-Birds” whoosh by smoothly on first listen, and then reveal deeper pleasures upon each repeated play. “Live It Up” once again displayed their firm grasp of disco, while “Go Through It” adds a subtle country edge to the proceedings.
When the genre twists come, the luxury of having Harry at the helm makes all the difference. She caresses the reggae of “The Tide Is High” with the same kind of care she ladles on the antiquated formats of “Here’s Looking at You” and “Follow Me.” And her charmingly clunky rap on “Rapture” plays wonderfully off the ice-queen routine she delivers in the other portions of the song.
Record label execs are notoriously reticent about changing a winning formula, so that could be the reason they balked at this album. The critics who panned it, well, we’re having a harder time figuring out what they were thinking. In any case, Autoamerican won the day via its immediate commercial success, and it has stood the test of time much better than any number of “safer” records from Blondie’s peers.
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