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“Heart of Glass” is a song by the American new wave band Blondie, written by singer Debbie Harry and guitarist Chris Stein. It was featured on the band’s third studio album, Parallel Lines (1978), and was released as the album’s third single in January 1979 and reached number one on the charts in several countries, including the United States and the United Kingdom.

In December 2004, Rolling Stone ranked the song number 255 on its list of the 500 greatest songs of all time.It was ranked at number 259 when the list was updated in April 2010. Slant Magazine placed it at number 42 on their list of the greatest dance songs of all time and Pitchfork named it the 18th best song of the 1970s.

In 2018, “Heart of Glass” ranked at number 66 in the UK’s official list of biggest selling singles of all-time with sales of 1.32 million copies.

In August 2020, songwriters Debbie Harry and Chris Stein sold the rights to the song, as one of 197 Blondie songs, to investment fund company, Hipgnosis Songs Fund.

Background

Debbie Harry and Chris Stein wrote an early version of “Heart of Glass”, called “Once I Had a Love”, in 1974–75. This earlier version was initially recorded as a demo in 1975. The song had a slower, funkier sound with a basic disco beat. For this reason the band referred to it as “The Disco Song”. This original version was inspired by The Hues Corporation‘s hit disco song “Rock the Boat” (1974). The song was re-recorded in a second demo with the same title in 1978, when the song was made a bit more pop-oriented. Harry said that “‘Heart of Glass’ was one of the first songs Blondie wrote, but it was years before we recorded it properly. We’d tried it as a ballad, as reggae, but it never quite worked”, and that “the lyrics weren’t about anyone. They were just a plaintive moan about lost love.” It was only when the band met with producer Mike Chapman to start work on Parallel Lines that Harry recalled Chapman “asked us to play all the songs we had. At the end, he said: ‘Have you got anything else?’ We sheepishly said: ‘Well, there is this old one.’ He liked it – he thought it was fascinating and started to pull it into focus.”

Exactly who decided to give the song a more pronounced disco vibe is subject to differing recollections. On some occasions, the producer Mike Chapman has stated that he convinced Harry and Stein to give the song a disco twist. On other occasions, Chapman has credited Harry with the idea. As a band, Blondie had experimented with disco before, both in the predecessors to “Heart of Glass” and in live cover songs that the band played at shows. Bassist Gary Valentine noted that the set list for early Blondie shows often included disco hits such as “Honey Bee” or “My Imagination”.

In an interview published in the February 4, 1978 edition of NME, Debbie Harry expressed her affinity for the Euro disco music of Giorgio Moroder, stating that “It’s commercial, but it’s good, it says something… that’s the kind of stuff that I want to do”. A notable example of this type of musical experimentation occurred when Blondie covered Donna Summer‘s “I Feel Love” at the Blitz Benefit on May 7, 1978. In his history of CBGB, music writer Roman Kozak described this event: “When Blondie played for the Johnny Blitz benefit in May, 1978, they surprised everyone with a rendition of Donna Summer’s ‘I Feel Love’. It was arguably the first time in New York, in the middle of the great rock versus disco split, that a rock band had played a disco song. Blondie went on to record ‘Heart of Glass,’ other groups recorded other danceable songs, and dance rock was born.”

The song was ultimately given the disco orientation that made the song one of the best-known Blondie recordings. For the single release the track was remixed by Chapman, with the double-tracked bass drum even more accentuated.

In reflecting on the development of “Heart of Glass” from its earliest incarnations until the recorded version on Parallel Lines, Chris Stein noted that the earliest versions had a basic conventional disco beat, but that the recorded version incorporated the electronic sound of Euro disco, stating that “The original arrangement of ‘Heart of Glass’—as on the [1975] Betrock demos—had doubles on the high-hat cymbals, a more straight-ahead disco beat. When we recorded it for Parallel Lines we were really into Kraftwerk, and we wanted to make it more electronic. We weren’t thinking disco as we were doing it; we thought it was more electro-European.”

The Parallel Lines version (as well as most others) contained some rhythmic features that were very unusual for the disco context, which typically follows a strict four-beats-per-measure pattern for maximum danceability. The instrumental interludes in “Heart of Glass”, in contrast, consist of ⁷
₄ (seven-beat) phrases, with exception to the last phrase and subsequent reprises of each interlude, which resolve back to eight beats per phrase.

The single reached number one on the singles charts in the US and the UK. In the US, the single was certified Gold by the Recording Industry Association of America in April 1979, representing sales of one million copies. In the UK, it was certified Platinum by the British Phonographic Industry in February 1979, also for sales of one million copies.

The song is associated with the disco and new wave genres.

In the video Harry wears a silver asymmetrical dress designed by Stephen Sprouse. To create the dress, Sprouse photo-printed a picture of television scan lines onto a piece of fabric, and then, according to Harry, “put a layer of cotton fabric underneath and a layer of chiffon on top, and then the scan-lines would do this op-art thing.” The popularity of the song helped Sprouse’s work earn a lot of exposure from the media. Harry also said that the T-shirts used by the male members of the band in the video were made by herself.

“Draped in a sheer, silver Sprouse dress,” Kris Needs summarized while writing for Mojo Classic, “Debbie sang through gritted teeth, while the boys cavorted with mirror balls”. Studying Harry’s attitude in the “effortlessly cool” video, musician and writer Pat Kane felt she “exuded a steely confidence about her sexual impact… The Marilyn do has artfully fallen over, and she’s in the funkiest of dresses: one strap across her shoulder, swirling silks around about her. Her iconic face shows flickers of interest, amidst the boredom and ennui of the song’s lyrics.” Kane also noted that the band members fooling around with disco balls, “taking the mickey out of their own disco fixation.” Reviewing the Greatest Hits: Sound & Vision DVD for Pitchfork, Jess Harvell wrote that while “owning your own copy of ‘Heart of Glass’ may not seem as cool [anymore]… there’s the always luminous Deborah Harry, who would give boiling asparagus an erotic charge, all while looking too bored to live.”

The first official remix of “Heart of Glass”, by Shep Pettibone, appeared on the 1988 Blondie/Debbie Harry remix compilation Once More into the Bleach and was a single in some territories. A 1995 remix by Diddy, from the Blondie compilation Beautiful: The Remix Album, reached no. 15 on the UK Singles Chart.

Picking up on their similarities, the Hood Internet‘s ABX created a mashup of “Heart of Glass” and Arcade Fire’s new wave-infused “Sprawl II” of 2010. (Harry later joined Arcade Fire in live performances of both songs at the Coachella Festival.)

Blondie rerecorded the song for the 2014 compilation album Greatest Hits Deluxe Redux, part of the two-disc set Blondie 4(0) Ever, which marked the 40th anniversary of the band forming.

Crabtree Remix (The Handmaid’s Tale)

A mashup by Daft Beatles (mashup producer Jonas Crabtree) titled “Crabtree Remix” was issued as a single in 2016. It combines elements of “Heart of Glass” and the Naxos recording of the second movement of the Violin Concerto by Philip Glass. Elisabeth Moss said in an interview for Refinery29 that she discovered the “Crabtree Remix” while making a playlist to prepare for the role and played it to the show’s director Reed Morano. “Reed decided to put in the show during the protest scene, which is the perfect place for it. That song gives me chills just talking about it.” The series’ costume designer Ane Crabtree also cites the “Crabtree Remix” as an inspiration for creating the iconic Handmaid’s look: “Lizzy Moss introduced me to the Philip Glass/Blondie mashup ‘Heart of Glass’ by Daft Beatles. Listening to it over and over again led to me designing the head gear for the Handmaids”.

Gisele and Bob Sinclar version

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In 2014, the Brazilian supermodel Gisele Bündchen went into the recording studio with French music producer and DJ Bob Sinclar to record a cover version of Blondie’s “Heart of Glass” for H&M. She is credited on the single by her mononym Gisele. The song is Gisele’s and Sinclar’s charity single for the H&M 2014 campaign. Bündchen spoke to the fashion trade magazine Women’s Wear Daily about the opportunity of working with Sinclar on “Heart of Glass” stating: “I never in a million years thought that I would record a song and to work with a producer like Bob.” A year earlier, she had recorded and released a cover version of the Kinks‘ “All Day and All of the Night” as her contribution to the H&M 2013 charity campaign.

The “Heart of Glass” music video by Gisele and Bob Sinclar shows her dancing on a beach. The video also features Bündchen’s vocal rendition of the song as the supermodel poses in sexy beachwear. The music video made its premier on the morning television show Good Morning America.

Miley Cyrus version

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American singer Miley Cyrus performed a cover of the song at the 2020 iHeartRadio Music Festival on September 19, 2020. The live performance was released as a single on September 29, 2020, following a high demand from fans. “Heart of Glass” will be included on her seventh studio album Plastic Hearts.

Hunter Harris of Vulture called the performance “a throaty, formidable delight”. The cover elicited praise from Blondie themselves, with them stating “We think @MileyCyrus nailed it” on their social media.

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