Song of the Day: Blondie “Dreaming”

“Dreaming” is a light speed and incandescent 1979 single from Blondie that ably bridges disco with New Wave. While also included on as the lead-off to their LP, Eat To The Beat (released the same year), the song is probably best experienced on its own. To take nothing away from the album on which it is housed, there is just something about the beauty and simplicity of the 7″ format that always seemed to suit Blondie to a “T”.

The song finds singer Debbie Harry in fine voice and reminiscing about the possibilities of a chance encounter with a stranger, who she in the end decides to not pursue. The song begins with a direct reference to the heart rending 1945 melodrama, Brief Encounter, directed by the great British filmmaker, David Lean. The plot of that movie centers on the chance encounter between two strangers at a train station restaurant who share a cup of tea and fall completely for each other – forcing them to decide if their passions will get the better of them and cause them to betray their respective spouses. The film is low-key yet brilliantly devastating, and Blondie do a great job of capturing the emotional core of the film while, like many great pop songs, blowing those feelings up to larger than life size.

Musically the song is one of the band’s very best, with Harry‘s long-term band-mate and romantic partner, Chris Stein, adding a cutting guitar line which the snaking keyboard line and frantic drumbeat ably wrap around. That said, it is still really Harry‘s effortless sense of cool and unrelenting charisma that remain firmly the stars of the show. “Dreaming” is one of the great anthems to chance encounters, including those that may never have occurred in real life and may just exist in the untouchable domain of dreams.