1979
I hate that it’s the last year of the seventies. A great decade for music and a lot of cool things. Now the eighties are coming…
A masterpiece. I was 12 when this was released and it sounded timeless even then. It was a great song in 1979 and will be great in 2079. Not only are the words inventive but this was most people’s introduction to Mark Knopfler. I wasn’t a guitar player when I was 12 but I knew he was something special.
I’ve heard this one at what seems like a thousand times but I’ll always turn it up when it comes on the radio.
Blondie members Debbie Harry and Chris Stein wrote the first version of this song in early 1974, shortly after they first met. They didn’t have a proper title for the song, and would refer to it as “The Disco Song.”
Evidently finding words to rhyme to “glass” that fit in a song were… a pain in the ass. American radio at that time frowned on that rhyme. To ensure airplay stations were sent an edited version with the offending line replaced with “soon turned out I had a heart of glass.”
This was the first song I ever knew by the Clash when I heard it on the radio in 1980. The song is credited to Mick Jones and Joe Strummer like most Clash songs. Mick Jones takes the lead vocals in this one.
They started off as a punk band but The Clash, unlike some other Punk bands, could really play and sing well…, especially Mick Jones. He is was probably the best pure musician in the band.
This song was released in 1979 was one of many signs a change was coming in music. Gary Numan on the inspiration of the song. “A couple of blokes started peering in the window and for whatever reason took a dislike to me, so I had to take evasive action. I swerved up the pavement, scattering pedestrians everywhere. After that, I began to see the car as the tank of modern society.”
Numan has stated that he has Asperger syndrome, which is a mild form of autism, but until he was diagnosed, he had a lot of trouble relating to other people.
I was never a huge disco fan but this song always meant a lot to me. I’m a huge baseball fan and my Dodgers really sucked in 1979. The Pirates on the other hand had a 39-year-old Willie Stargell leading them to a World Series championship and this is the song that will be forever linked to that year, team, and World Series. Here’s to Pops…Willie Stargell.
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