The original idol: BLONDIE.
It was February 1999. I'd arrived in New Zealand just four months earlier, filled with pre-teen angst and a longing to be taken a little more seriously. My music taste was limited to the tapes of my parents and whatever I managed to videotape from the Top40 hits that showed on Saturday morning TV. Filled with a lust-beyond-my-years by Jennifer Paige the year before, I was well versed in the language of a nonchalant (read non-existent) crush, but I was yet to figure out what it meant to be cool.
My music taste was limited to the tapes of my parents and whatever I managed to videotape from the Top40 hits that showed on Saturday morning TV.
Billie had told me We Could Do Anything, B*witched had me declaring C'est La Vie but I was still an awkward dork in pedal pushers. Then in walked Maria. Smooth as silk. Cool as air. I couldn't tell you exactly where I was the first time I heard Blondie's 1999 comeback hit 'Maria', but all at once I was transformed from gangly too-tall-for-my-age-pre-teen into too-tall-for-my-age-pre-teen-who-tries-really-hard-to-"move-like-she-don't-care".
I was transformed from gangly too-tall-for-my-age-pre-teen into too-tall-for-my-age-pre-teen-who-tries-really-hard-to-"move-like-she-don't-care".
The love affair was instant. It would take me another eight years to become bonded to Blondie's back catalogue (a post for another time) but Maria catapulted her from 'Mum's music' to mine.
So there we have it, Debbie Harry is a woman I most definitely love. What's your Blondie story ? Which female artists do you love ?
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