Blondie -- The Tide is High

 

Welcome to another Thursday edition of Reminiscings of Youth. What I remember from the music video for Blondie's October 1980 hit "The Tide is High" are two things. First, there was the close-up of Debbie Harry's pretty face singing the song in a lower register compared to the high and floaty vocals she demonstrated with the band's first big breakthrough "Heart of Glass" in 1979. Second, I recall seeing a rocket ship on the pad ready for launch. Looking over the video again for the first time in a long time, I was reminded of what I'd thought was the Dark Lord of the Sith admiring the singer through some video effects. 

"The Tide is High" is quite the different animal from "Heart of Glass". Both have been categorized as New Wave but with the former, there are a few more genres that have been thrown at it: reggae, calypso, rocksteady and pop. And as for me, contrasting with those reggae and calypso labels, I couldn't help getting some of those mariachi vibes from Mexico because of the horns and strings. 

"I'm going to be your No. 1"? Wow, no better prediction could have been made. Blondie's take on "The Tide is High" actually got to be No. 1 in Canada, America, New Zealand and the UK. The song is also available on the band's 2nd album from November 1980, "Autoamerican".

As with many 1980s hits, "The Tide is High" by Blondie is actually a cover of the original 1967 song by the Jamaican group The Paragons and is known as a rocksteady song. According to the Wikipedia article regarding the genre, rocksteady seems to have been a transitional type of music between its precursor ska and then its successor reggae.

So what also got to be our No. 1...No. 2 and No. 3 on Oricon just a few days before Blondie's "The Tide is High" was released on Halloween 1980? Let's take a look.

1. Seiko Matsuda -- Kaze wa Aki Iro （風は秋色）

2. Toshihiko Tahara -- Hatto Shite! Good （ハッとして!Good）

3. Junko Yagami -- Purpletown (パープルタウン）You Oughta Know By Now