Parallel Lines in Bloomington, MN

Blondie
turned to Britain-based
pop
producer
Mike Chapman
for their third album, on which they abandoned any pretensions to
new wave
legitimacy (just in time, given the decline of the style) and emerged as a mainstream, contemporary
pop/rock
band. But it wasn't just
Chapman
's influence that made
Parallel Lines
's best album; it was also the band's own songwriting, including
Deborah Harry
,
Chris Stein
, and
Jimmy Destri
's
"Picture This"
;
Harry
and
Stein
disco
-styled
"Heart of Glass"
; and
and new bass player
Nigel Harrison
"One Way or Another"
; plus two contributions from non-band member
Jack Lee
"Will Anything Happen?"
"Hanging on the Telephone."
Together, they were enough to give
a number one on both sides of the Atlantic with
and three more U.K. hits, but what impresses is the album's depth and consistency -- album tracks like
"Fade Away and Radiate"
"Just Go Away"
are as impressive as the songs pulled for singles. Still,
's contribution is not to be discounted; a producer with a track record full of punchy British
hits with his former partner
Nicky Chinn
for
Suzi Quatro
Mud
the Sweet
Smokie
, he brought his sense of precise arranging and playing to a band that previously had been quite sloppy in execution, and he did it without sacrificing the group's spirit, particularly
's snotty yet sophisticated vocal style. The result is state-of-the-art
circa 1978, with
's tough-girl glamour setting the pattern that would be exploited over the next decade by a host of successors, led by
Madonna
. (The 2001 reissue adds four bonus tracks, among them a live rendition of
T. Rex
"Bang a Gong (Get It On)"
and a previously unreleased preliminary version of
called
"Once I Had a Love (AKA The Disco Song)."
~ William Ruhlmann