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X-Offender

This essay is still being edited, but feel free to let me know what you think in the comments! “I saw you standing on the corner, you looked so big and fine I really wanted to go out with you, so when you smiled I laid my heart on the line.” Debbie Harry reads the opening lines from Blondie’s 1976 debut single, “X-Offender,” in a singsong girlish tone that evokes the beginning of The Angels’ 1963 hit “My Boyfriend’s Back.” Harry’s bit was intended to honor – and possibly tease – Richard Gottehrer, who had produced The Angels’ single and also produced Blondie’s eponymous debut album. The juxtaposition of the subject matter – a streetwalker having a crush on the police officer who’s arresting her, and her fantasy of their developing relationship (and you thought the plot of Pretty Woman was improbable) – is executed with the ironic sensibility that characterized punk and new wave, in an era of music that sometimes questioned the idealized innocence of the 1950s-1960s era of pop musi

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