Listening to an 80s station today and Rapture came on. Made me wonder once again what the hell is that song about?
Lyrics here Blondie - Rapture Lyrics | AZLyrics.com
The song is about Blondie jumping on the rap bandwagon. And drugs, hallucinogenic drugs.
Wasn’t Blondie bigger than the whole of rap at the time, at least outside New York City? It seems to me that “Rapture” boosted rap as much as the other way around, goofy as that might sound now from the other side of the hip-hop diaspora.
Yes, this song was a ground-breaking rap song. At that point rap was a very niche music genre, and for Blondie to record a rap song (citing Fab Five Freddy, no less), and release it as a single, brought it to mainstream attention it did not have otherwise at that point.
As to the lyrics? Well, lots of pop songs have lyrics that are just nonsense on purpose, or are impenetrable to those who weren’t part of the writing process. Ostensibly it’s about an alien invasion. doh. LOL
Am I the only one who thinks that the video for Rapture is one of the most bizarre pop music videos ever?
No. This one is.
Meaning? I just want it to rhyme, man.
a Doors/BLondie mashup:
I wasn’t outside New York City at the time, so I wouldn’t know about that. In New York she was three years behind the Sugar Hill Gang and Grand Master Flash. Blonde tried their hand at it and produced Rapture. You wanna call that seminal rap, that’s up to you.
Eh, the song is bizarre, but I don’t find that video to be all that strange–their dancing and outfits would fit in pretty well with “Love is a Battlefield” for example.
Really, early 80s videos were strange all over as people were still figuring out the whole phenomenon. Which is why stuff like “Total Eclipse of the Heart” works so well for the Literal Video treatment.
There’s a good trivia question about Blondie that I like to pull out:
"What band had 4 Billboard #1 pop songs featuring four different styles:
- New Wave
- Hard Rock
- Rap
- Reggae/Caribbean?"
Damn, Debbie Harry was hot. And probably still is, taking time into account.
What was the question?
I went to the MOCA Art in the Streets exhibit, and they made a big deal about the “Rapture” video. I guess it was one of the first real mainstream hits for graffiti. Plus, with Fab 5 Freddy involved in the song, it was a big thing for hip-hop too.
Try going here.Some of the “facts” are suspect but overall the site is pretty entertaining.
Just because it was outside your realm of experience doesn’t mean it’s not true. It may not be seminal in terms of the genre itself, but in terms of bringing the genre to the mainstream, it was. It wasn’t the ONLY song to do so, but it was part of the vanguard.
It was a hideous failure from what was otherwise the greatest pop band of all time.
Well, I saw Blondie in concert a few years ago and time is catching up with her. She had gained some pounds over the years. But she turned 66 on July 1st so she looked good for her age. She is, by the way, three years older than Mary Weiss, who was the lead singer for the Shangri-las. You wouldn’t think that because the Shangri-las were a mid60s group and Blondie was late 1970s/early 1980s. But then Debbie at her height didn’t want to be reminded that she was in some late 1960s folk rock group called “Wind in the Willows”.
Rap had been around for about three years but mainly in the Black urban markets. By having a #1 hit with it, they were able to taake it to new markets like “Solid Gold”. Whether that is a good thing is debatable, I’m with Ozzy Osbourne when he replied to the question where is rap headed “Into the garbage can, I hope”. But then I thought Tipper Gore and Susan Baker and the PMRC were a bunch of idiots.
I liked that buried in the lyrics she mentions “finger f*****g” and would listen to see if some unsuspecting radio station would play that version.
“Rapture” was released only two months after Sugar Hill Gang’s “Rapper’s Delight”. Blondie didn’t invent rap but I think it’s unfair to say they were jumping on a bandwagon.
I don’t know if it was a commercial failure but I hated it from the first time I heard it and I was a pretty big Blondie fan. However, not being a fan of rap / hiphop I may not be the best judge. Do any fans of the genre think Ms. Harry’s rapping was good? I find it cringeworthy, like someone’s extrememly unhip aunt trying to fit in at a frat party or something.
This and the fact that the lyrics are just plain dumb.
I mean a man from Mars, going to bars, eating cars. Sheesh, put at least a little effort into it.
In Blondie’s defense though, they may have never intended a formal release of the song.
I remember on a VH-1 Behind the Music-type show, one of the guys working in the studio never thought much of the song. Well he finds himself in Paris and out of the blue, the song comes on the radio. He remembers thinking, “What the hell are they playing this song for?” since he figured the group was just messing around in the studio when they laid the track down.