Forty-five years ago, Blondie were sitting pretty atop the British charts, having scored the third of their, so far, six UK No. 1 singles. For many it’s their favourite 45 from the New York pop powerhouse. Either way, it’s the one about the hair, tonight…
By 1980, American new wavers were really on a roll. Written by the band’s crack hot keyboardist Jimmy Destri and Debbie Harry herself, Atomic was the third and final UK single taken from fourth album Eat To The Beat, but the only one to crash the top of the charts, sparking a hat trick of No. 1s that continued with Call Me and The Tide Is High.
With its thunderous Three Blind Mice opener (sadly excised from the single edit) introducing what could pass as a beach bum anthem from The Ventures, Atomic takes us into a slightly psychedelic whirlwind of stream of consciousness scat vocals and spaghetti western soundscapes.
It’s low on lyrics but has an insistent hypnotic quality that is a series of dislocated disco-funk fragments held together by an anthemic four-note surf guitar riff that is the track’s indelible anchor.
In other words, no traditional verse/chorus structure, just one mesmeric melody and key-change after another. It’s also a playful exploration of neon permafrost pop interlarded with the fracturing of society, but, in reality, the only direct association with nuclear war is the metaphor of a sudden release of energy. Atomic is more accurately described as a song about seduction and orgasm, which would describe the lack of structured lyrics.
Indeed, Harry later admitted the arbitrary line “Oh, your hair is beautiful” seemed to fit with the music and meant something but nothing in particular. It’s about a passionate rendezvous, perhaps forbidden, perhaps a final encounter. The atomic metaphor perfectly sums up love during a time of heightened nuclear tensions between Russia and the West, the underlying anxiety that this could be your last time.
Vocally, the much imitated moment when Debbie lowers her voice to something like a cross between Margaret Thatcher and a zombie and declares deadpan, “atomic!” is still rather wondrous.
Then beauty amid the rubble, as the video shows Blondie performing a concert for a post-nuclear society. As we enter the scene of decay and dissolution, there’s a meet and greet cameo from Jean-Michel Basquiat (predating his turn as a DJ in Rapture by some margin), before the dystopian vision of Debbie wearing a garbage bag while dancing like a robot. This was all the rage in the late seventies, I kid you not.
Of course, the fade to European grey is nothing new. It’s essentially Bowie’s Diamond Dogs meets Ultravox’s Hiroshima Mon Amour (which itself would be cheekily rewritten on Bryan Ferry’s Frantic) but here Blondie’s collagist sensibilities make it magnificent. In the end, Atomic’s abstraction is what makes it one of the greatest chart-toppers of the eighties.
Yes, I know you could hear it as a last lingering liaison as doomsday approaches, but I prefer the more metaphysical reading: in that desire to come up with something that would match the absolute of nuclear war, Harry simply reached for the perfect gesture of glamour — “Oh, oh, oh tonight.”.
That the flip side was Die Young Stay Pretty was absolutely no coincidence.
Made it magnificent, they did.
Steve Pafford, with thanks to Gary Douglas Lennon
Blondie, Bowie, Basquiat: The Clem Burke interview (part one) is here
