Blondie

The 2011 box set rounds up Blondie's three latter-day comeback albums: No Exit, Livid, and The Curse of Blondie. This may not be Blondie's prime, but they had a strong comeback, and this is a good, wallet-friendly way to hear it all at once…

If new wave was about reconfiguring and recontextualizing simple pop/rock forms of the '50s and '60s in new, ironic, and aggressive ways, then Blondie, which took the girl group style of the early and mid-'60s and added a '70s archness, fit right in…

In artistic terms, Plastic Letters, Blondie's second album, was a classic example of the sophomore slump. If their debut, Blondie, was a precise update of the early-'60s girl group sound, delivered with an ironic, '70s sensibility, its follow-up seemed to consist of leftovers, the songwriting never emerging from obscurity and pedestrian musical tracks…

Greatest Hits: Sight & Sound offers a best of compilation by Debbie and the boys, plus a bonus DVD of their videos and performances. Includes "Heart Of Glass", "Atomic", "Call Me", "Hanging On The Telephone" and "Rapture" to name but a few.

Blondie turned to British pop producer Mike Chapman for their third album, on which they abandoned any pretensions to new wave legitimacy (just in time, given the decline of the new wave) and emerged as a pure pop band…

This terrific live footage of Blondie shows the band playing a collection of songs from their first two albums, Blondie & Plastic Letters - it pre-dates their big success of Parallel Lines. Some punkers would say it shows the band at their peak…

If you consulted a Blondie discography in the fall of 2002, you would see a slew of compilations listed, and you might wonder why a new Greatest Hits was needed. But a closer examination would reveal that there really is a niche into which such a collection would fall: that of a full-priced, single-disc, CD-era hits compilation covering the band's entire career…