Follow Me

On Autoamerican, the fifth album by Blondie, the band ventured into new territories while staying true to their essence. The opening track, Europa, already set the tone: an instrumental overture with orchestral arrangements that ends with Debbie Harry’s voice reciting a dramatic passage. But if there’s one track that defies expectations within the same album, it’s Follow Me. Clocking in at just three minutes, this song serves as a bridge between the rock of the 1970s and the pop that would dominate the following decade, without falling into predictability. The sound is clean, almost minimalist, yet with a detail that makes it stand out: the production by Mike Chapman and the recording handled by Lenise Bent, Gary Boatner, and Doug Schwartz give it a shine few tracks of the era managed to capture.

The song was born at a pivotal moment for the band. Blondie had gone from being a cult group in the United Kingdom and Australia to dominating the charts in the United States with hits like Call Me and Heart of Glass. But on Autoamerican, they aimed higher: blending disco, pop, rap, and even reggae, all while keeping their New Wave DNA intact. Follow Me fits into this experiment as another link, though with a more intimate feel than other cuts on the album. It was recorded in 1980, when the band had already realized that pure rock wasn’t the only path forward. The track also aired on radio in several countries, though without reaching the massive impact of other singles from the album like The Tide Is High or Rapture —the latter being the first rap song to top the U.S. charts—.