The wistful, synth-heavy, slow-motion Shayla makes Blondie’s debt to 60s girl groups explicit once more. The exception that proves the rule about the quality of Eat to the Beat’s non-single tracks.
It sounds like nothing else Blondie have recorded. Its episodic seven-minute closer – a cover of a song by a Canadian YouTube influencer, would you believe – is stately, weary and angry. Since reforming in 1999, Blondie’s albums have been of decidedly mixed quality, but their most recent, Pollinator, is easily the best. Extra points for the video, which involves Darth Vader, a flooded apartment and a dancer unaccountably dressed as Pan – it makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. When it came to picking cover versions, you couldn’t fault Chris Stein and Debbie Harry’s taste, hence this slickly appealing take on the Paragons’ John Holt-penned 1967 single.
