Blondie - AutoAmerican (1st Press 1980)

Title: Blondie - AutoAmerican
Year/Genre/Sub-Genre/City: 1980, New Wave, Pop Rock, Art Pop, New York, New York 9/26
Matrix #: CHE 1290
Condition: VG+ (no issues at all, plays great, light normal wear) (KG) | Members: Blondie (N/A) | Producer: Mike Chapman
Cultural Facts:

1. New York Band Goes Hollywood: Blondie left their familiar New York environment and recorded much of AutoAmerican in Los Angeles with producer Mike Chapman. The sessions came during an increasingly tense period for the band, with exhaustion, fame and internal disagreements beginning to strain relationships behind the scenes.
2. Jamaican Record Reborn: "The Tide Is High" wasn't written for Blondie at all. It came from a 1967 recording by Jamaican rocksteady group The Paragons, written by John Holt. Blondie's elaborate remake brought a relatively obscure Jamaican song to a huge international pop audience more than a decade later.
3. Rap Meets MTV-Era Pop: "Rapture" became one of the earliest major pop hits to put a rap section directly into a mainstream song. Debbie Harry name-checked Grandmaster Flash and Fab Five Freddy, people she actually knew from New York's emerging hip-hop and downtown art circles, creating an unusual bridge between CBGB-era punk culture and the city's young hip-hop scene.