July is Interational Blondie and Deborah Harry Month

International Blondie and Deborah Harry Month is an annual celebration each July of the band Blondie and its lead singer, Deborah Harry. This special month recognizes the significant contribution both Blondie and Deborah Harry have made (and continue to make) to popular music. Blondie's musical legacy has been documented recently by two books: Making Tracks: The Rise of Blondie (a reprint of the original edition) by Deborah Harry, Chris Stein and Victor Bockris, Blondie, From Punk to the Present: A Pictorial History, which has been described as the definitive book on the subject, and Picture This: Debbie Harry and Blondie, a pictorial by photographer Mick Rock. And Deborah Harry's influence and achievements have been documented by author Cathay Che in Deborah Harry.

Major sources for information about Blondie and Deborah Harry include Blondie.net (the official Blondie website), the Deborah Harry and Blondie Information Service (DHBIS), Blondie: The Complete Discography, and The Blondie Review (TBR).

Blondie took the music world by storm in the late '70s and early '80s, and the influence of this band and its lead singer Deborah Harry is still being felt today and increasingly recognized with the passage of time. Blondie reunited in the late 1990s, produced a new album, No Exit, in 1999, and another album, The Curse of Blondie, in 2004.

New York City-based Blondie was formed in 1974, honing its musical skills at the famous punk rock club, CBGBs, and eventually emerging on top of the new wave scene and then crossing over to the pop music mainstream. Their self-titled first album, Blondie, reflected a punk ethos and 1960s girl group sensibilities or, the Ramones meets the Ronettes, as one music critic opined. Blondie made six albums from 1976 to 1982, the most successful being Parallel Lines, considered by many music critics to be one of the best rock albums of all time. Within this time span, from the late seventies to the early eighties, Blondie constituted a major force on the rock/pop scene, producing a string of hit singles internationally. The most well-known of these singles are the reggae-inspired "The Tide Is High," the rap song "Rapture," and the disco-flavored "Heart of Glass" and "Call Me." More recently, in 1999, the single, "Maria," debuted at number one in the United Kingdom, making this song the sixth number one single for the group there. With this hit single, Blondie reached yet another milestone--the first band to have had a number one single in each of the last three decades in the United Kingdom. So Blondie continues to make music history and the band's legacy grows. The members of Blondie are true pioneers in every sense of the word.

International Blondie and Deborah Harry Month is officially registered with the authoritative Chase's Calendar of Events and the National Special Events Registry.

Updated: April 2004