Let’s move from Christmas to Blondie…not a bad thing. I hope everyone had a great Christmas/Holiday.
Yet another great pop/rock single by Blondie. Blondie had a short window but they made the best of it. They had 4 number 1 hits, 4 top 10 hits, and 10 songs in the Billboard 100 total.
Lead singer Debbie Harry wrote this song with the group’s bass player, Nigel Harrison. Harry wrote the lyrics to Blondie’s songs, but composer credit for the music was generally given solely to whoever made the biggest contribution. This was often guitarist Chris Stein, who co-wrote “Rapture” and “Heart Of Glass.”
The song was on the Parallel Lines album and peaked at #24 in the Billboard 100 in 1979.
From Songfacts
This song is about a stalker. The lyrics are very dark and go into detail about a guy with evil intentions, but the music is very light and catchy, which masked the meaning of the song. According to Blondie lead singer Debbie Harry, it was inspired by real events. She told Entertainment Weekly: “I was actually stalked by a nutjob, so it came out of a not-so-friendly personal event. I tried to inject a little levity into it to make it more lighthearted. It was a survival mechanism.”
Harry says that the title and the idea for the song popped into her head during a rehearsal, and most of the song was hashed out on the spot.
This was featured on a 2011 episode of the TV show Glee in a mashup with “Hit Me With Your Best Shot.” The medley by the Glee Cast was released as a single and went to #86 in the US.
With radio-friendly songs like this one, Blondie was one of the first Punk bands to have Pop success. They played clubs like CBGB’s (stands for Country, BlueGrass, Blues) with bands like The Ramones and Television, but their songs were much lighter and led to mainstream acceptance. The Police and Talking Heads are other groups that came out of that scene.
In 2013 the UK boyband One Direction recorded a new version of this song, mashing it up with The Undertones’ “Teenage Kicks.” It was recorded to mark the 25th anniversary of the fundraising event Red Nose Day and was a hit in both the UK where it topped the chart and the US where it peaked at #13.
Kristen Bell sings this (quite well) at karaoke in the 2005 Veronica Mars episode “Clash Of The Tritons,” where she uses the song to alert a gang of her intentions.
One Way Or Another
One way or another, I’m gonna find ya
I’m gonna get ya, get ya, get ya, get ya
One way or another, I’m gonna win ya
I’m gonna get ya, get ya ,get ya, get ya
One way or another, I’m gonna see ya
I’m gonna meet ya, meet ya, meet ya, meet ya
One day, maybe next week, I’m gonna meet ya
I’m gonna meet ya, I’ll meet ya
I will drive past your house
And if the lights are all down
I’ll see who’s around
One way or another, I’m gonna find ya
I’m gonna get ya, get ya, get ya, get ya
One way or another, I’m gonna win ya
I’ll get ya, I’ll get ya
One way or another, I’m gonna see ya
I’m gonna meet ya, meet ya, meet ya, meet ya
One day, maybe next week, I’m gonna meet ya
I’ll meet ya, ah
And if the lights are all out
I’ll follow your bus downtown
See who’s hangin’ out
One way or another, I’m gonna lose ya
I’m gonna give you the slip
A slip of the hip or another, I’m gonna lose ya
I’m gonna trick ya, I’ll trick ya
One way or another, I’m gonna lose ya
I’m gonna trick ya, trick ya, trick ya, trick ya
One way or another, I’m gonna lose ya
I’m gonna give you the slip
I’ll walk down the mall
Stand over by the wall
Where I can see it all
Find out who ya call
Lead you to the supermarket checkout
Some specials and rat food
Get lost in the crowd
One way or another, I’m gonna get ya (where I can see it all, find out who ya call)
I’ll get ya, get ya, get ya, get ya
One way or another, I’m gonna get ya (where I can see it all, find out who ya call)
I’ll get ya, get ya, get ya, get ya
One way or another, I’m gonna get ya (where I can see it all, find out who ya call)
I’ll get ya, get ya, get ya, get ya
One way or another, I’m gonna get ya (where I can see it all, find out who ya call)
I’ll get ya, get ya, get ya, get ya
One way or another, I’m gonna get ya (where I can see it all, find out who ya call)
I’ll get ya, get ya, get ya, get ya
One way or another, I’m gonna get ya (where I can see it all, find out who ya call)
I’ll get ya, get ya, get ya, get ya
Excellent song. Parallel Lines and Eat To The Beat were two of the very best albums of that whole era…nary a bad song between the two.
funny how it wasn’t a big hit sales-wise back then, but now is probably among the ten or twenty most-played songs from that year on classic rock radio and pops up in a different ad every year it seems.
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I was surprised it wasn’t a top 10 hit…you would think it was the way it gets played.
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I love Blondie. I think they were fantastic. All the elements lined up. They had a cerebral songwriter guitarist who teamed with enigmatic lead singer and a great rhythm section. Their drummer…Wow! Clem Burke is one of the very best drummers out there. He is the only drummer inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a band member and as a drummer, he is so highly regarded in the music industry.
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Burke is the one drummer that can capture Keith Moon’s excitement that I have seen. He studied him quite a bit. He can capture it and be in control.
I’m as big of fan of him as Debbie Harry.
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Me too. I like the whole band. They are all talented. Harry is probably the least talented musically, but she is very talented artistically. She has artistic instincts. She is ahead of the curve.
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This is one of my fave songs from that time.
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Debbie Harry wrote this song to tell the stalker that she was not afraid of him and that he should fear her.
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I really enjoyed Parallel Lines and Eat To The Beat- they lost me after that. .. I always champion the song- but their best song in my opinion- or at least my favorite Blondie song didn’t do all that well on the charts- “Dreaming” from Eat To The Beat.
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I like Dreaming a lot. This song didn’t do as well either as some of their others. As much as it gets played you would think it was top 10.
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