Union City Blue

In 1979, Blondie were having one of the great commercial years in new wave history — Heart of Glass hit number one in the UK in February, Sunday Girl topped the charts in May, and Dreaming narrowly missed the top spot in October. Against that backdrop, Union City Blue arrived in November as the second single from Eat to the Beat and somehow failed to crack the Top Ten. It reached number 13. Critics and fans have been baffled by that ever since.

Debbie Harry wrote the song on an evening break from filming Union City, a low-budget film noir shot in and around Union City, New Jersey — across the Hudson from Manhattan, the kind of place that exists in New York's shadow without apology. Union City Blue captures that geography perfectly: the intertwined guitars and keyboards that Harry described as having "the force of an incantation," Clem Burke's drum part — which he composed himself and named as a personal favorite to perform — and Harry's voice carrying the weight of a romance that feels simultaneously ordinary and life-or-death.

The song was never released as a single in the United States — a decision that drummer Burke later called a mistake, noting it was more immediately radio-friendly than the tracks that were chosen. It appeared in the 1981 horror film The Hand and the 2007 dark comedy Margot at the Wedding. A 1995 remix featuring production by Diddy charted again in the UK, reaching number 31. The original recording remains the one worth returning to — three and a half minutes of Blondie operating at a peak their chart positions that year somehow undersold.