Review: Blondie, Greatest Hits: Sound & Vision

While Sound & Vision doesn’t sport any new studio material, the album does boast three previously unreleased tracks.

Blondie, Greatest Hits: Sound & VisionThough the album is missing two tracks from its U.K. incarnation, including Blondie’s very first single “X Offender” and “(I’m Always Touched By Your) Presence, Dear,” Greatest Hits: Sound & Vision is still impressively comprehensive for a single-disc collection. It’s so extensive, in fact, that their watershed Parallel Lines is in danger of being cannibalized—present and accounted for are both U.S. hits “One Way or Another” and “Heart of Glass” (which is, unfortunately, presented as its shortened radio mix as opposed to its full-length disco version) as well as “Hanging on the Telephone” and three other album tracks. Immediately following the success of Parallel Lines, Blondie struggled to maintain their success in their native U.S., though moderate hits “Atomic” and the ABBA-esque “Dreaming” prove, in retrospect, to be fine additions to their canon. And, of course, the band eventually rebounded and topped the U.S. pop charts three more times, including the industrial-strength “Call Me,” helmed by Giorgio Moroder, and “The Tide Is High.” Blondie tried to recapture the sunny harmonies and reggae influence of “Tide Is High” with the Caribbean-flavored “Island of Lost Souls,” their final hit before disbanding in 1982. The former, like “Heart of Glass” and “Call Me,” proved the band was more than willing to stretch the boundaries of what it meant to be a Pop Band, risking their popularity with new wavers to dabble in the latest musical trends, but the former just sounded (and sounds) like the efforts of a band that had lost its vision. While Sound & Vision doesn’t sport any new studio material, the album does boast three previously unreleased tracks: a deft mashup of the chart-topper “Rapture” and the Doors’s “Riders on the Storm” and remixes of 1976’s “In the Flesh” and 2004’s “Good Boys,” the original of which belongs alongside Blondie’s greatest, but sadly never received the attention it deserved.

Score: 
 Label: Capitol  Release Date: March 7, 2006  Buy: Amazon

Sal Cinquemani

Sal Cinquemani is the co-founder and co-editor of Slant Magazine. His writing has appeared in Rolling Stone, Billboard, The Village Voice, and others. He is also an award-winning screenwriter/director and festival programmer.

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