(Credits: Far Out / Alamy)
Mon 23 February 2026 6:00, UK
It says a lot that one of the most popular Blondie songs is also one of their most misunderstood.
Back in 1981, ‘Rapture’ was the kind of song that people either loved or hated. Since the beginning of their rise, Chris Stein and Debbie Harry had encountered all sorts of pushback and scrutiny, but ‘Rapture’ was, to the sceptics, a symptom of poor imitations of well-established scenes. Those who loved it, however, understood the kind of community that it came from, as well as the style of artists that the pair were switched on to at the time.
After all, at the time, Harry and Stein had been getting into many defining figures of the Bronx-based hip-hop scene with artists like Fab 5 Freddy and DJ Grandmaster Flash (both of whom she name-checks in the song). For ‘Rapture’, therefore, they chose to imitate the rhythms and word structures of those songs and progressions and combine them with their signature disco-inspired edge.
The rap makes little sense now as it did then, with Harry pouring abstract and surrealist imagery into a story about a man from Mars who eats cars until it becomes you. In her words, “Then you’re in the man from Mars / You go out at night, eatin’ cars / You eat Cadillacs, Lincolns, too / Mercurys and Subaru / And you don’t stop, you keep on eatin’ cars.”
Considered the first number-one hit with a rap section, ‘Rapture’ was endearing because it was strange but rhythmically infectious in that quintessential and fearless Blondie way. At the time, there was nothing else that sounded like it, not in mainstream spaces that is, and certainly not in a way that actually worked and sounded good. Even now, it’s difficult to find songs that are as culturally daring and commercially rewarding – but that’s also why it’s so enduring.
In fact, you’d be hard pressed to find any modern song that lived up to the same appeal as ‘Rapture’, let alone one that caused as much of an explosion upon release. And while the second-coming of the song doesn’t actually exist, not entirely, Harry once claimed that the closest thing to its modern counterpart is Lil Nas X’s ‘Old Town Road’.
Sonically, there’s technically little to compare, but that’s neither here nor there when the main argument Harry made was that it married rap elements with country elements – a pairing that’s just as hard to come by in today’s climate. The band actually performed their own version a few years back, something Harry said was Stein’s idea, giving their own rock-inspired spin on it.
Discussing the decision with Rolling Stone, Harry discussed the similarities and why it seemed like the “perfect parallel”. She said, “When we did rap then, it was controversial, because it was a new form and the way that we had done it was more or less an homage. It was a weird crossover. And ‘Old Town Road’ did the same thing because it is supposedly rap with country. So it seemed like the perfect kind of parallel.”
Their version is pretty impressive. Harry, of course, performs both the melody and the rap section, evidently channelling everything she felt when she first recorded and performed ‘Rapture’. Maybe it was a strange crossover, as she mentioned, but when you watch the clip, their cover version makes complete sense.