Eat to the Beat is the fourth studio album by American rock bandBlondie. It was released on September 28, 1979 by Chrysalis Records. The album was certified Platinum in the US, where it spent a year on the Billboard album chart. Peaking at, it was one of Billboards top 10 albums of 1980. It also reached on the UK album chart in October 1979 and was certified Platinum by the BPI.
History
The album includes a diverse range of styles: pop, punk, reggae, and funk, as well as a lullaby. Three singles were released in the UK from this album. "The Hardest Part" was released as the second single from the album in the US instead of "Union City Blue". According to the liner notes of the 1994 compilation The Platinum Collection, the song "Slow Motion" was originally planned to be the fourth single release from the album, and producer Mike Chapman even made a remix of the track, but following the unexpected success of "Call Me", the theme song to the movie American Gigolo, these plans were shelved and the single mix of "Slow Motion" remains unreleased. An alternate mix of the track entitled The Stripped Down Motown Mix did, however, turn up on one of the many remix singles issued by Chrysalis/EMI in the mid-1990s. Blondie's first video album was produced in conjunction with this record, featuring a music video for each of the album's twelve songs. It was the first such project in rock music. Most of the songs were filmed in and around New York. One of the exceptions was the "Union City Blue" music video, which was filmed at Union Dry Dock, Weehawken, New Jersey. Each video was directed by David Mallet and produced by Paul Flattery. The video was initially available as a promotional VHS in 1979 and subsequently released on videocassette and videodisc in October 1980. Unlike the rest of Blondie's original albums, Eat to the Beat was not remastered in 1994. It was later digitally remastered and reissued by EMI-Capitol in 2001, with four bonus tracks and candid sleeve notes by Mike Chapman: The 2001 remaster was again reissued in 2007 without the four bonus tracks. Included instead was a DVD of the long-since deleted Eat to the Beat video album, marking the first time it had been made available on the DVD format.
