Long May They Rock: Nine Trailblazing Women Who Rewrote the Rules of Music
From Apollonia and Debbie Harry to Aimee Mann and Crystal Waters, we salute the unstoppable artists whose sounds, styles, and stories continue to define generations.
wmagazine.com
By Alex Hawgood
Photographs by Ethan James Green
Styled by Charlotte Collet
May 13, 2025
(Posting just the Debbie Harry section. Full article can be found in the link at the bottom of this page.)
Debbie Harry
Forever the queen of downtown New York cool, Debbie Harry defies definition, by design. Between 1979 and 1981, her band, Blondie, landed four No. 1 hits, each in a radically different genre: disco (“Heart of Glass”), new wave (“Call Me”), rocksteady (“The Tide Is High”), and hip-hop (“Rapture”). “At the time, it was considered groundbreaking,” recalled Harry, with a go-figure shrug. “Now it’s normal.”
She tested boundaries offstage as well, collaborating with designer Stephen Sprouse; haunting Warhol’s studio, the Factory; and starring in cult films like Videodrome and Hairspray. Her signature platinum look became the blueprint for pop provocation, imitated by nearly every blondie who followed her up the charts.
But her allure runs deeper than surface cool. She reinvented the bombshell archetype with punk cynicism, deliberately playing into—and subtly undermining—the stereotypes associated with beauty and fame. “The nature of art,” she said, “is to give a little pinch of your own salt.” Harry is still refining that recipe. She recently reissued her 1981 solo album, KooKoo, produced by Chic and featuring cover art by H.R. Giger. A capsule collection she designed for Wildfang is inspired by her own closet.
Blondie’s upcoming fall album—the band’s 12th, and its first since 2017—is helmed by producers John Congleton, whose credits include Erykah Badu, St. Vincent, and Lana Del Rey, and David Wrench, who has worked with Frank Ocean and Jamie xx. The release follows the death of longtime Blondie drummer Clem Burke. “I’m at a crossroads,” Harry admitted, still grappling with his passing. “I’m not thinking the same way.” Still, she perseveres—defiant as ever. “I’ve had one fuck of an interesting life,” she wrote in her 2019 memoir. “And I plan to go on having one.”
https://www.wmagazine.com/culture/women-music-icons-portfolio-2025
