Celebrations are in order as Blondie‘s iconic frontwoman Debbie Harry is turning 80 on Tuesday.
Harry co-founded Blondie with guitarist Chris Stein in New York in the ‘70s. The band hit it big in 1979 with the release of their third studio album, Parallel Lines, a top-10 hit in the U.S. thanks to songs like “Heart of Glass,” their first #1 single, “One Way or Another” and “Hanging on the Telephone.”
The band went on to have four #1 singles, have sold over 40 million albums worldwide and were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2006. And they’re still making music, with Stein revealing that a new album’s expected out sometime this year.
Harry also launched a solo career in 1981 with the album KooKoo and dabbled in acting, appearing in such movies as 1988’s Hairspray and 2002’s Deuces Wild.
She’s also been a fashion icon throughout her career; in a new interview with Vanity Fair she discussed the pressure she’s felt to look good, sharing she’s had plastic surgery because it “made me feel better about myself.”
“Maybe it made me feel happy, or more confident. It was just something that I felt necessary at the time,” she explains. “I wanted to work, and so much of women being attractive, and being a selling point, is clearly showbiz. If you’re going to be in the business, be in it.”
As for how Harry plans to celebrate 80, back in January she told the U.K. paper The Times, “I’m going to have a whopping great party with everyone there. Though one of the bad things about aging is everyone’s gone already.”
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