Debbie Harry Says She Is Recording New Music With Blondie At Age 70

Debbie Harry is 70-years-old, but she has no plans to retire anytime soon. The Blondie singer not only rocked the stage at Sweetlife Festival in Columbia, Maryland, over the weekend, but she even dropped the news that she is recording new music with her Blondie bandmates, according to Billboard.

During the rainy weekend show, Harry fronted a five-person backup band made up of both old and new Blondie members to perform some of the iconic ’80s band’s biggest hits. During her set, Debbie Harry teased that the band has been spending some time in the recording studio.

“I’m really happy to announce we’ve been recording again,” Harry told the crowd.

Debbie Harry, playing @MerriweatherPP's Sweetlife Festival, is still keeping it fresh. https://t.co/dpmRxrU7gL pic.twitter.com/jGZ4rfTCWm

— Baltimore Sun Arts (@baltsunlife) May 6, 2016

First established in 1976, Debbie Harry’s Blondie grew out of New York’s mid-’70s punk scene. Harry’s band has sold more than 40 million albums and are is best known their big hits like “Call Me” and the 1980s smash “Heart of Glass.” As the band celebrates its 40th anniversary this year, they have released 10 studio albums, the last one, Ghosts of Download/Blondie 4(0), in 2014. But Blondie’s lengthy four-decade history includes a hiatus 1982 to 1997, during which Debbie Harry pursued a solo career.

Debbie Harry is often credited as the first rapper to chart at No. 1 in the United States due to her extended rap sequence in the 1981 song “Rapture.”

Harry told the Telegraph that the early Blondie music was a bit tongue-in-cheek as it played on pop, punk, and pop culture of the late 1970s.

“It was very much about irony at that time,” Debbie said. “It was about a sophisticated sort of put-down, antisocial but witty. We were always trying for that play on words, for the double entendre.”

Harry pointed to the early ’80s switch in music — and a newcomer named Madonna, who ultimately took her throne as the queen of pop when Blondie temporarily broke up.

“There was a switch in music,” Harry said. “And I think it may have been primarily with her. She really went to showbiz. She was a solo artist; she wasn’t in a band; she wasn’t representing anyone but herself. And she did very well.”

Harry has gone on record as talking about how different today’s music industry is than it was during Blondie’s heyday. Unlike today’s micromanaging music management teams, Harry said her management was “very absentee.”

“Most of our career, our contracts were created by the record label,” Debbie explained. “We were innocent at the time but the contracts held, so that was really decisive. For some of our biggest years we were getting a very low percentage, which is unheard of nowadays.”

Four decades later, Harry says she has no thought of retiring from the music business. In fact, Debbie says she is inspired by Yoko Ono, who still performs onstage in her 80s.

“I guess I’m supposed to be shocked by it,” Debbie said of her 70th birthday last July. “But I’m amazed by aging and how it happens differently for different people.”

Debbie Harry added that one thing has changed with the times: How she dresses on stage. Still, don’t expect to see her donning old lady clothes at her shows just because she’s 70.

“I want to dress age-appropriately, but I also love those funky younger looks,” Debbie said. “And some days I think I pull it off better than others. I don’t really have a lot of women around me when we’re on the road, so usually my crew are the ones who’ll say, ‘That looks good.’ Then other times, they won’t say anything!”

Take a look at the video below to see Debbie Harry paying tribute to David Bowie earlier this year.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZpEDjIxSNMs

[Photo by Tristan Fewings/Getty Images for amfAR]