Debbie Harry

Deborah Ann Harry (born Angela Trimble; July 1, 1945) is an American singer, songwriter and actress, best known as the lead vocalist of the band Blondie. Labelled the "Queen of New Wave" by American Songwriter, four of her songs with the band reached No. 1 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 between 1979 and 1981.

Born in Miami, Florida, Harry was adopted as an infant and raised in Hawthorne, New Jersey. After college she worked various jobs—as a dancer, a Playboy Bunny, and a secretary (including at the BBC in New York)—before her breakthrough in the music industry. She co-formed Blondie in 1974 in New York City. The band released its eponymous debut studio album in 1976 and released three more studio albums between then and 1979, including Parallel Lines, which spawned six singles, including "Heart of Glass". Their fifth studio album, Autoamerican (1980), produced hits including a cover of "The Tide Is High", and "Rapture", which is considered the first rap song to chart at number one in the United States.

Harry released her debut solo studio album, KooKoo, in 1981. During a Blondie hiatus, she embarked on an acting career, appearing in lead roles in the neo-noir Union City (1980) and in David Cronenberg's body horror film Videodrome (1983). She released her second solo studio album, 1986's Rockbird, and starred in John Waters's cult dance film Hairspray (1988). She released two more solo albums between then and 1993, before returning to film with roles in a John Carpenter-directed segment of the horror film Body Bags (1993), and in the drama Heavy (1995).

Blondie reunited in the late 1990s, releasing No Exit (1999), followed by The Curse of Blondie (2003). Harry continued to appear in independent films throughout the 2000s, including Deuces Wild (2002), My Life Without Me and Spun (2003), and Elegy (2008). With Blondie, she released the group's ninth studio album, Panic of Girls, in 2011, followed by Ghosts of Download (2014). The band's eleventh studio album, 2017's Pollinator, charted at number 4 in the United Kingdom.

Harry was born Angela Trimble on July 1, 1945, at the Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami, Florida. At the age of three months, she was adopted and renamed Deborah Ann Harry by Catherine (née Peters) and Richard Harry, of Hawthorne, New Jersey, later gift shop proprietors in Cooperstown, New York. She is of Scottish ancestry and her biological parents' surnames were Trimble and Mackenzie. Harry learned of her adoption at four years old. At first, she decided against locating her birth parents, but nonetheless, in the late 1980s, located her birth mother, a concert pianist, who chose not to establish a relationship with Harry. In her memoir, she recalls being a tomboy, spending much of her childhood playing in the woods adjacent to her home.

Biography summary from English Wikipedia, photograph via Wikimedia Commons.