(Credits: Far Out / Universal Pictures)
Sun 1 March 2026 0:00, UK
Every musician gets two lives: a musical evolution within a band, and another creative personality as a solo act.
It’s quite unusual that that should go well for every member of the band after its dissolution, but every batch has at least one promising act with favourable chances of breaking onto the scene with a whole new name for themselves. Apparently, that luck didn’t belong to Blondie’s Debbie Harry.
In a recent interview with Westchester Magazine, the former punk band’s own blonde revealed her biggest career disappointment. “I don’t know if there are any major career disappointments,” the now 80-year-young Miami native revealed, “I’m disappointed now that I can’t get my new music into the charts. I don’t know if it’s completely compatible with the way the charts are today. But, before I stop making music, I would like to have another hit song.”
Harry is one of a long list of former frontpeople who failed to replicate their band’s success while solo. This might be due to the fact that many people actually thought her name was Blondie and that the band was just her accompaniment, or that her music belongs to a new wave that is simply no longer new. Once the punk era sizzled into the rearview mirror of the early 1980s, those who sought to carry the style into the age of experimental rock faced the dilemma of adapting or sinking.
Harry released 23 solo singles between 1981 and 2008, but only four managed to break into the British Top 40, and none made a scratch on the top 40 in her own US. Her UK successes included ‘French Kissin’ (in the USA)’, which is a cover version of someone else’s work, a 1985 song originally recorded by Carol Chapman, a catchy tune that became her most widespread success, reaching number eight in 1986 in the UK. Even though the song became her solo signature and her most renown solo example, it’s illustrative of someone struggling to find their unique voice away from the shadow of a previous musical identity.
Although it can’t be denied that Harry’s solo endeavours had a versatile flair, some of her creative work from ‘Rush rush’ to ‘Brite Side’ may have verged too far out of punk into pop, and there was already a pop princess taking up the spotlight.
Rebellious and blonde, the late ’80s saw the stupendous rise of Madonna, whose aesthetic and voice were remarkably similar to Harry’s new work, yet her new songs were becoming too commercial for the tastes of former Blondie fans, and diehard punks recoiled from her following. Blondie was innovative in rock, but Debbie Harry needed a niche in which to find a following, but didn’t find it.
In a 2017 interview with Vice, she revealed the epoch immediately after the band’s split as “pretty awful”, with “the band broke up, when Chris [Stein] was sick, when the IRS took the house. I mean, everything just went ‘Braah!’ That was pretty awful.” The breakdown of punk’s power couple, Harry’s long-term relationship with Blondie guitarist Chris Stein, put additional pressure on the perilous era, manifesting in a confused set of solo albums and a lack of clear audience strategy.
As Blondie’s hiatus came to a close in 1997, Harry finally saw a return to the charts, the band’s first album since their reunion, No Exit, peaking at number 18 on the US Billboard 200 and at number three in the UK. The group is still making music, with a new release expected later this year, so it seems Harry will have more hits at making a hit, but this time, with a little help from her friends.