{"id":545629,"date":"2026-07-17T06:51:24","date_gmt":"2026-07-17T06:51:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/545629\/"},"modified":"2026-07-17T06:51:24","modified_gmt":"2026-07-17T06:51:24","slug":"one-way-or-another-by-blondie-the-story-behind-the-song","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/545629\/","title":{"rendered":"One Way Or Another by Blondie: the story behind the song"},"content":{"rendered":"

With its seductive snarl and hooky riff, One Way Or Another provided a bridge between Blondie<\/a>\u2019s grimy, CBGB<\/a> past and glossy commercial future. It is in many ways the quintessential moment from the ultimate new wave album, 1978\u2019s Parallel Lines, which yielded six singles in the US and UK and sold more than 20 million copies worldwide.<\/p>\n

Those statistics would have been inconceivable just two years earlier. Blondie were the least likely candidates for global fame to emerge out of New York\u2019s seedy punk milieu. Ramones<\/a>, Television and Talking Heads were all marked out for critical, if not commercial, success. Blondie, by contrast, were regarded as a joke, with their attempts to bring girl- group sass to garage rock.<\/p>\n

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And then in 1977 their single Rip Her To Shreds, from their self-titled debut album, became a Top 5 hit in Australia. Suddenly it didn\u2019t seem ludicrous at all that this platinum-blonde sexpot backed by four identikit, dark-haired male musicians should become a mainstream staple. And by 1978 that\u2019s exactly what happened: Denis, (I\u2019m Always Touched By Your) Presence Dear and Picture This reached numbers 2, 10 and 12 respectively in the UK chart.<\/p>\n

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But the group still hadn\u2019t cracked the US market. Enter Mike Chapman, the bubble-glam producer for The Sweet, Suzi Quatro<\/a> and Mud, among others, who was brought in to finish the job that Richard Gottehrer, producer of Blondie\u2019s previous album, Plastic Letters, had started: to make them worldwide stars.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know if it was that deliberate,\u201d the band\u2019s guitarist and main songwriter, Chris Stein, considers, \u201cbut certainly Mike Chapman had been involved in a lot of number one records.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Stein agrees that Chapman gave Blondie an essential polish, notably on One Way Or Another: \u201cIt definitely connects punk and pop, especially in the vocals and the raw guitars. It\u2019s got the snarl of punk and the glossiness of pop.\u201d<\/p>\n

Blondie – One Way Or Another (1978) [REMASTERED HD] \u2022 TopPop – YouTube
\n\"Blondie<\/p>\n

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One Way Or Another was recorded between June and July 1978 at the Record Plant studio in New York. It packed a lot into its three-and-a-half minutes: a snappy guitar riff, keyboards, bass and drums that achieved the perfect blend of tunefulness and menace, some swirling organ, a police siren sound, and a coda that nodded to the band\u2019s 60s garage roots.<\/p>\n

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Then there was Debbie Harry\u2019s voice. It started off gently, carrying just enough icy disdain. Soon, though, louche irascibility set in for the \u2018get ya, get ya, get ya, get ya\u2019 hook, which swiftly turned into \u2018meet ya, meet ya, meet ya, meet ya\u2019. At this point, it became unclear who Harry was playing in this song about a stalker: the protagonist or the prey.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was so wild, I had to move out of New Jersey,\u201d she has said of her ex-boyfriend who worked all day in a chemical plant and drank all night, at which point he would \u201cstart after me\u201d, calling her on the hour, every hour, and then hanging around outside her door.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe girl in that song is certainly not a victim,\u201d says Stein. \u201cThe protagonist is a self-empowered figure.\u201d<\/p>\n

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The lyrics to One Way Or Another were written by Harry, while the co-writing credit went to the British-born Nigel Harrison, who had joined the band as bassist after Plastic Letters. The basic musical structure was Harrison\u2019s, but the details and flourishes could have come from any of the musicians in the band. \u201cEverybody played their part, and the songs were shaped in the studio,\u201d says Stein.<\/p>\n

Those studio sessions were fraught. Chapman, an Australian living in LA, found his first meeting with Blondie, at the Gramercy Park Hotel, decidedly \u201cunnerving\u201d, perhaps because they sensed that he had been brought in to clean up their act \u2013 or rather hone it until they became a well-oiled chart machine. \u201cThey were all over the place, musically,\u201d he said. \u201cThe group didn\u2019t know what hit them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Chapman\u2019s memory is of the \u201cdark, silent and serious\u201d Harry. As for the others, there was no little antagonism when they realised how hard he was going to work them to turn their demos \u2013 \u201cembryos of a musical masterpiece\u201d, as the producer put it \u2013 into finished works of pop art.<\/p>\n

One Way or Another – Blondie – The Midnight Special – YouTube
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\u201cHe [Chapman] was a hard taskmaster,\u201d Stein says with a laugh. \u201cHe would go over and over a part until we got the right version. That\u2019s something we hadn\u2019t been familiar with prior to working with him. By the time we got to [1979\u2019s] Eat To The Beat it was much more loose. That was like \u2018school\u2019s out\u2019 compared to Parallel Lines.\u201d<\/p>\n

Stein got off lightly \u2013 during one session Chapman claims to have \u201crode [Harrison] so hard he threatened to take me apart piece by piece if I didn\u2019t back off. No one,\u201d he adds, \u201cwas happy with my technique.\u201d<\/p>\n

It worked, though. One Way Or Another, although never released as a single in the UK, became such a favourite with audiences it felt as though it had been. In the US it reached No.24. It presented a new type of female role model: the intimidatingly glamorous, every bit as tough as Poly Styrene or Siouxsie Sioux, but with added boho, SoHo chic, as though Patti Smith<\/a> had been remade\/remodelled by Warhol.<\/p>\n

Surprisingly, for all its qualities, Stein didn\u2019t think One Way Or Another would make a good single, let alone a hit. \u201cYou\u2019re never 100 per cent sure,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

With a little help from One Way Or Another and its parent album, Blondie became one of the biggest bands of the era. They also invented a new paradigm: catchy, danceable new wave, the sort that has been unavoidable these past few years.<\/p>\n

Asked whether he\u2019s amazed at their achievement, Stein\u2019s wry reply is as pure New York cool as the song itself. \u201cSomewhat,\u201d he says, \u201cyeah.”<\/p>\n

This feature originally appeared in Classic Rock 160, published in June 2011.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Today’s best Blondie: Parallel Lines deals<\/p>\n

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