6 Best Blondie Albums, Ranked

Anyway, here are the best albums Blondie has released to date. There was an intention to rank all 11, but some of them are just not very good or memorable (and of the bad ones, only the infamous The Hunter is really any fun to critique and dig into). So, instead, here are the half-dozen Blondie albums that range in quality from pretty good to absolutely great/classic.

6 'No Exit' (1999)

Blondie came back in 1997, and the world of music was entirely different by that stage, compared to how it was when Blondie broke up in the early 1980s. That probably goes without saying, but even then, the band still managed to have one sizable hit from their 1999 album, No Exit, which was “Maria.” And “Maria” is honestly one of the band’s best songs, being successful outside the U.S. at least, and even topping charts in a few places, including the U.K.

It’s the clear highlight of No Exit, which is an otherwise serviceable and sometimes interesting album, and one that’s a big improvement on the last album Blondie put out before (temporarily) disbanding: The Hunter. There are some worthwhile tracks here, and it does experiment with genres in the way Blondie did on the band’s better and more classic albums, but the length of No Exit is an issue. Blondie is at their best when they're punchy, and willing to keep an album’s duration to about 40 minutes, or even a bit under. No Exit was made in the CD era, and plenty of albums released when that was the primary format stretched out longer than needed. No Exit is one of them, and it feels a bit bloated at almost an hour in length.

5 'Autoamerican' (1980)

The possible and very slow start of the decline, maybe, given the lesser qualities of Autoamerican return in full force and unbearably powerful in The Hunter, but taken on its own, Autoamerican is still mostly good. It hasn’t disappeared beyond the point of no return, or anything, more just suggesting it’s flirting with going there. There’s an intention here when it comes to shifting away from rock, because the first four Blondie albums (also the four best ones) had a mix of new wave pop and rock in there, plus some other genres, while Autoamerican is far more pop-focused.

That would be okay if it were great pop, but it’s mostly decent pop, with occasional memorable/slightly great pop. “The Tide Is High” is well-remembered, and for good reason, while “Rapture” is also a pretty iconic song… or it is until Debbie Harry starts rapping. Actually, more accurately, at that point, you’ll either go from liking the song to loving it, or loving the song to throwing your hands up in frustration at why Debbie Harry is rapping. It’s bizarre (and perhaps thankfully) unlike just about any other song in the entire discography of Blondie.

4 'Blondie' (1976)

A self-titled debut album is the perfect way to signal to the world, “Hey, this is our band, and this is the kind of stuff we’re going to do, and generally what we’re going to sound like,” for obvious reasons. Blondie do indeed do that with Blondie (1976), and especially so with the opening track, “X Offender.” This is pop in the sense that it has that kind of 1960s girl-group feel in the intro, replicating that very consciously, and then it’s also a big, booming, grand, epic-sounding pop/rock song, albeit with fairly eye-catching (or ear-grabbing?) lyrics.

It’s about a sex worker being arrested, and then having a crush on the police officer who arrests her, so… yeah, that’s quite the opening statement. It could’ve been wilder, since the song was originally called “Sex Offender” and had more unsettling lyrical content. Anyway, Blondie established themselves as willing to be playful, somewhat transgressive, and confident, all the while proving they knew how to pull off a great melody and overall sound. Blondie also includes “In the Flesh” and “Rip Her to Shreds” as very strong highlights, but the album as a whole is let down by some of the messier and less well-written songs, with the closer, “The Attack of the Giant Ants,” ultimately closing out the album on what’s easily its weakest note, which is a shame after the self-titled debut opened so spectacularly.

3 'Plastic Letters' (1978)

Plastic Letters is, by and large, a more consistent and generally more well-polished album in the style of Blondie’s debut. It’s easy to get the two mixed up, to some extent, since they have track lists that unfold in a similar way, and Plastic Letters does still have a little of the inconsistency that plagued Blondie (1976)… just not as much. There also might not be a high that’s quite as high as “X Offender,” but some tracks come close.

“Fan Mail” is a good opener, “Denis” is an impossible-to-shake earworm, and then “(I'm Always Touched by Your) Presence, Dear” is one of the band’s best-ever songs; maybe even an underrated one, too. All those songs are on the first side of the album, meaning side two suffers a bit in comparison, but there are deep cuts there that do hold up as pretty good. If you like the debut, then you'll like Plastic Letters, and vice versa. And if you want something a little better still, then the next two Blondie albums have got you more than covered…

2 'Eat to the Beat' (1979)

There was a soon-to-be-mentioned 1978 album that was a very difficult one to top, for Blondie, but the band did a pretty great job, all things considered, with its follow-up: Eat to the Beat, released just one year later. Things don’t always divide neatly into decades, but it’s surprising that this one wasn’t actually a 1980s release. Like, yes, it came out in October 1979, and that was incredibly close to the start of the 1980s, but even if it’s just a couple of years ahead of its time (and it really, really is), then that has to count for something. Blondie perfected new wave while it was still cool, in other words; before everyone started doing it in the actual 1980s.

On Eat to the Beat, you get two of Blondie’s best deep cuts: “Union City Blue” and “Shayla,” or at least they're deep cuts in the sense that you won’t hear them as much on the radio as the album’s two biggest tracks. Those two are “Dreaming” and “Atomic,” and they really deserve to be the most acclaimed and popular on Eat to the Beat, since they're both incredible songs. “Dreaming” is a perfect opener, and the sound of “Atomic” is incredible… or maybe its atmosphere? It’s hard to describe. And the way it does so much with so few words, lyrically speaking (there are only about a dozen words heard throughout, most of them repeated and strung together in different ways), is also extremely impressive.

1 'Parallel Lines' (1978)

Keeping it simple now, because Parallel Lines also keeps things simple and no-nonsense, yeah, this is the best Blondie album by far. Being able to say it’s the best by far makes it all the more impressive because those three previously-mentioned albums are no slouches, by any means, but none of them condense everything great about the band into a single album. Also, Parallel Lines is the one with “Heart of Glass” on it, so it was pretty much always destined to top a ranking like this.

Okay, okay, “Heart of Glass” aside, Parallel Lines is still pretty much perfect. The one-two punch of “Hanging on the Telephone” and “One Way or Another” makes for a textbook example of how to open a pop/rock/new wave album, all the while infusing it with a bit of punk energy. And then it can be kind of punk without a disco-heavy song like “Heart of Glass” clashing in a detrimental way, which is astounding. And further praising this album would probably just result in listing every single track, so for highlights beyond the three already mentioned, “Picture This,” “Pretty Baby,” and “Sunday Girl” are all phenomenal. This is one of the best albums of all time. It has mass appeal for those who like pop, and for those who shun pop, Parallel Lines also feels cool enough to listen to without being silly and insecure about “not being cool” or whatever. The hipsters and the casual listeners can unite over this one and how good it is, and that’s not something you can say about tons of albums, even some of the critically acclaimed variety.