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Parallel Lines

Parallel Lines is the third studio album by American rock band Blondie, released on September 23, 1978, by Chrysalis Records to international commercial success. The album reached No. 1 on the UK Albums Chart in February 1979 and proved to be the band's commercial breakthrough in the United States, where it reached No. 6 on the Billboard 200 in April 1979. In Billboard magazine, Parallel Lines was listed at No. 9 in the top pop albums year-end chart of 1979. The album spawned several successful singles, notably the international hit "Heart of Glass".

This article is about the Blondie album. For the geometry term, see Parallel (geometry). For other uses, see Parallel Lines (disambiguation).

Parallel Lines

September 23, 1978

June–July 1978

Record Plant (New York City)

39:06

Music and lyrics[edit]

According to music journalist Robert Christgau, Parallel Lines was a pop rock album in which Blondie achieved their "synthesis of the Dixie Cups and the Electric Prunes".[3] Its style of "state-of-the-art pop/rock circa 1978", as AllMusic's William Ruhlmann described it, showed Blondie deviating from new wave and emerging as "a pure pop band".[4] Ken Tucker believed the band had eschewed the "brooding artiness" of their previous albums for more hooks and pop-oriented songs.[5] Chapman later said, "I didn't make a punk album or a New Wave album with Blondie. I made a pop album."[6] The album's eleven pop songs have refined melodics, and its sole disco song, "Heart of Glass", features jittery keyboards, rustling cymbals by drummer Clem Burke, and a circular rhythm.[7] Burke credited Kraftwerk and the soundtrack to the film Saturday Night Fever as influences for the song and said that he was "trying to get that groove that the drummer for the Bee Gees had".[8]


Lyrically, Parallel Lines abandoned what Rolling Stone magazine's Arion Berger called the "cartoonish postmodernist referencing" of Blondie's previous new wave songs in favor of a "romantic fatalism" that was new for the band.[7] "Sunday Girl" deals with the theme of teen loneliness. Music critic Rob Sheffield said that the lyric "dusty frames that still arrive / die in 1955", in "Fade Away and Radiate", is the "best lyric in any rock'n'roll song, ever, and it's still the ultimate statement of a band that always found some pleasure worth exploiting in the flashy and the temporary."[9]

Title and packaging[edit]

Parallel Lines took its name from an unused track written by Harry, the lyrics of which were included in the first vinyl edition of the album. The cover sleeve image was photographed by Edo Bertoglio and was chosen by Blondie's manager, Peter Leeds, despite being rejected by the band. The photo shows the band posing in matching dress suits and smiling broadly in contrast to Harry who poses defiantly with her hands on her hips while wearing a white dress and high heels.[2] According to music journalist Tim Peacock, the cover became "iconic – and instantly recognisable".[10]

Release and promotion[edit]

The album was released by Chrysalis in September 1978,[10] to international success.[11] The album entered the Billboard album chart the week ending September 23, 1978, at No. 186, reflecting retail sales during the survey period ending September 10, 1978.[12] In the United Kingdom, it entered the albums chart at No.13, eventually reaching the no.1 spot in February 1979 after the band had scored hits with the singles "Picture This" (UK #12), "Hanging on the Telephone" (UK #5), and "Heart of Glass" (UK #1). "Sunday Girl" was released in the UK as a fourth single from the album in May 1979 and also reached no.1, and Parallel Lines became the UK's biggest selling album of the year. Blondie embarked on a sold-out tour of the UK and appeared at an autograph signing event for Our Price Records on Kensington High Street; according to Peacock, it "descended into Beatlemania-esque chaos when the band were mobbed by thousands of fans".[10]


Parallel Lines was also a commercial success elsewhere in Europe, Australia, and the United States, where the band had struggled to sell their previous records. "Heart of Glass" became their first number-one hit on the American Billboard Hot 100, with help from a promotional video directed by Stanley Dorfman depicting Blondie in a performance of the song at a fashionable nightclub in New York. The single was "responsible for turning the band into bona fide superstars", Peacock said.

Reissues[edit]

The album was reissued and remastered in 2001 along with Blondie's back catalog, and featured four bonus tracks: a 1978 demo of "Heart of Glass", a live cover of T. Rex's song "Bang a Gong (Get It On)", and two live tracks taken from the Picture This Live live album.[36]


On June 24, 2008, an expanded 30th Anniversary Edition of the album was released,[37] which featured new artwork[38] and bonus tracks along with bonus DVD.[39] The liner notes once again featured lyrics to the unfinished "Parallel Lines" song. The Parallel Lines 30th Anniversary Edition included the 7″ single version of "Heart of Glass", the French version of "Sunday Girl" and some remixes, plus a DVD with albums, promo videos and TV performance.


The band also launched a world tour of the same name to promote the re-release and celebrate the event.[40]

The album version of "Heart of Glass" was replaced with the disco version (5:50 long) on pressings of the album from March 1979 onward. The original length version of "Heart of Glass" appeared on the original US CD release in 1985 (Chrysalis VK 41192, later F2 21192) although the CD artwork proclaimed it was the disco version. Later editions of the Capitol disc had the mistake removed from the inlay but it remained on the disc until its deletion. The 1994 DCC Compact Classics Gold CD release (Capitol Special Markets USA GSZ 1062) features the original version with the disco version as a bonus track.

A promotional CD of the album was given away free with the British newspaper on December 5, 2010, including the bonus tracks "What I Heard" and "Girlie Girlie" from the band's 2011 album Panic of Girls.[42]

The Mail on Sunday

– electronic keyboards

Jimmy Destri

– guitar, co-lead vocals on "I Know but I Don't Know"

Frank Infante

– guitar, 12-string, E-bow

Chris Stein

– bass

Nigel Harrison

Premier drums

Clem Burke

– vocals

Deborah Harry

(1980). Blondie. Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0-671-25540-1.

Bangs, Lester

(1993). Australian Chart Book 1970–1992 (illustrated ed.). St Ives, N.S.W.: Australian Chart Book. ISBN 0-646-11917-6.

Kent, David

Olliver, Alex (September 20, 2017). . Louder. Archived from the original on October 27, 2021. Retrieved February 22, 2020.

"The New York punk albums you need in your record collection"