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Autoamerican 1980
Album · by Blondie ↗ View artist

Autoamerican

Blondie always had a radar for what was coming. With Autoamerican, released in November 1980, the band took that instinct one step further: they blended rock, pop, jazz, reggae, and even rap into an album that sounded like a future that was already here. Recorded in Los Angeles —for the first time outside New York—, the album was born from a journey that included sessions under the California sun and a cover that brought them back to their city: a photo on a rooftop near Broadway and Eighth Avenue, with a futuristic car in the background. The title was almost going to be Coca Cola, but the company rejected the idea. The result was an album that, according to producer Mike Chapman, didn’t convince the record label at first: “We didn’t hear any hits,” they told him. Two months later, they had two number ones.

Year
1980
Songs
12
Duration
46 min 37 seg

About the album

Autoamerican, according to DoReSol

The album kicks off with Europa, an instrumental overture with strings and electronics that ends with the voice of Debbie Harry reciting about car culture. From there, the journey takes unexpected turns: The Tide Is High, a cover of the Paragons’ song that took them to the top in the U.S. and the U.K.; Rapture, where they fused funk, jazz, and the then-nascent rap to create the first rap song to reach number one on U.S. charts; and Faces, with blues and saxophone influences. They even closed with Follow Me, a track from Camelot that rounded out the idea of an album that didn’t stick to just one style. The band played with musicians like Tom Scott on sax and Wah Wah Watson on guitars, while Chris Stein joked about driving through “science fiction movie cars” to get to the studio.

The reception was immediate: Autoamerican reached number three in the U.K., number seven in the U.S., and number eight in Australia. Later reissues —in 1994 and 2001— added extended versions of Rapture and mixes of other hits, like Call Me. But beyond the numbers, what stood out was how the album captured a moment when pop could be experimental without losing its hook. Stein summed it up years later: “We weren’t trying to sound deep, we just wanted every song to sound like something no one else had done.” And boy, did they ever.