Debbie Harry

Deborah Ann Harry (born July 1, 1945) is an American singer and actress who fronted the new wave band Blondie from 1974, a group that scored four US number-one singles between 1979 and 1981 and became one of the first acts to bridge punk, disco, reggae, and hip-hop in commercial pop. Her platinum bob and deadpan stage presence made her a fixture of the late-1970s downtown New York scene.

Born in Miami, Florida, she was adopted at three months by Richard and Catherine Harry of Hawthorne, New Jersey. She earned an associate degree from Centenary College for Women in 1965, worked as a Playboy bunny, BBC secretary, and beautician, and sang briefly with the folk-rock group the Wind in the Willows before joining the Stilettos in 1973.

With guitarist Chris Stein she founded Blondie in 1974, signing to Private Stock and then Chrysalis. The albums Parallel Lines (1978), Eat to the Beat (1979), and Autoamerican (1980) yielded "Heart of Glass," "Call Me," "The Tide Is High," and "Rapture," the last regarded as the first US number-one single to feature rapping. The band broke up in 1982 as Stein was diagnosed with pemphigus.

Harry recorded five solo albums, beginning with KooKoo (1981), and acted in films including David Cronenberg's Videodrome (1983) and John Waters's Hairspray (1988). Blondie reunited in 1997 and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2006. Her memoir Face It appeared in 2019.

The name Debbie is an English diminutive of Deborah, from the Hebrew Devorah, meaning "bee," carried in the Old Testament by a prophetess and judge of Israel. She uses it on every album credit and book jacket.