Sunday Music – Rapture

Posted on Sun 04/10/2011 by TonyfromOz

Today’s music video is ‘Rapture’ from Blondie.

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This video was posted to You Tube by emimusic

I love nearly all genres in music. I’m not all that keen on Rap, and to a lessee degree, Techno, but there are aspects of both that I do like.

When it comes to Rap, I’m ambivalent, mainly because I like my music to have, well, structured music, as part of the song.

Some Rap is very clever, and some even very well done, and Marshall Mathers III (Eminem) has done some really clever work over the years.

Rap rarely crosses over into the mainstream music charts, even though quite a lot of people in the different music genres have in fact released rap as part of the songs that they have released over the years. Stevie Wonder has done Rap, as have others, and why some of their stuff is appealing, even when full on Rap is not, is that most of those other artists have done the Rap as an incorporated part of a song.

While some earlier songs from other artists incorporated Rap, and did reasonably well on the Charts, the first that actually topped the Mainstream Charts with Rap as part of the song was today’s featured song from the American band Blondie.

This band had ridden into huge popularity with the advent of New Wave music, referred to also as Punk Music.

Blondie formed in the mid 70’s but it was not until the release of their third album ‘Parallel Lines’ in 1978 that they had their first hit, and that song went all the way to Number One, the wonderful ‘Heart Of Glass’, and I remember every time this song came on any of the TV music programs, guys everywhere would immediately stop what they were doing, just to watch Debbie Harry.

Form that point onwards, any song that was being played by Blondie caused the same reaction from males anywhere, such was her beauty and the almost offhanded way she sang the songs she did.

The band had four Number One hits in the U.S. in the time they were together, and disbanded in 1982, after producing 6 studio albums, and a number of Singles.

Their songs also performed well on the charts in other Countries, and in fact Blondie were big in Australia right from the release of their first album, two years before their first hit in the U.S. The band was also huge in the UK.

The featured song for today was their last Number One, from 1981 from their album ‘Autoamerican’ which produced two Number One Singles.

The title of the song itself cleverly included the word ‘rap’ as part of the title, ‘Rapture’.

The Rap lyrics are very clever, and include one of the best sequence of lyrics to come out of the modern music era:

And then you’re in the man from Mars
You go out at night, eatin’ cars
You eat Cadillacs, Lincolns too
Mercurys and Subarus

The song itself includes more musical genres than just Rap, as it also has elements of Jazz, Funk, and straight New Wave Pop as well, and appealed to people across the board.

The video of the song was the first Rap song to be played on MTV, in 1981.

It just would not be right to feature a Sunday Music Post about Blondie without including their original Number One Smash Hit ‘Heart Of Glass.

Vodpod videos no longer available.

This video was posted to You Tube by emimusic