The name Debbie Harry evokes many images: seminal rock-n-roll figure, complex songstress, incandescent front woman, and fashion icon. As a vibrant global force and a shaper of pop culture, Debbie’s chart-topping success, fearless spirit, and rare longevity led to an induction into the Rock ‘N’ Roll Hall of Fame for Blondie in 2006, more than 40 million albums sold worldwide and acclaimed solo projects to boot. She has even engaged in an acting career with over 30 film and television roles to her credit.
She has become and still remains a true national treasure, one whose influence continues to impact the worlds of music, fashion, and art. With Blondie, undeniably one of the most trailblazing and influential bands of our time, she and co-founder Chris Stein brought the worlds of rock, punk, disco, and ska together with “Heart of Glass” and “Call Me” and broke ground by combining hip-hop and pop on “Rapture.”
As a solo artist, Nile Rodgers & Bernard Edwards co-produced her first release Koo Koo in 1981 and she continued to defy expectations with such genre-busting efforts as “French Kissing in the U.S.A.,” “Rush Rush,” “Rain” and “The Jam Was Moving.” Her spectacular voice drips with a sophisticated elegance rarely heard in pop music and she continues to infuse her work with an exquisite artistic sensibility.
From an irreverent Lower East Side punk goddess to bona fide international ambassadors of New York cool, Debbie Harry will forever be synonymous with that punk spirit that lives somewhere in all of us.
