Synopsis

Blondie are stranded in a surreal New York adventure. While the band waits on the street, Debbie Harry appears trapped inside a flooded apartment, with fish drifting past the windows. A mysterious, Darth Vader-like figure watches her from an otherworldly control room. After reuniting with the band, Harry joins them at a rocket launch and travels into space, where she confronts the strange observer and ends the encounter with an unexpectedly playful dance.

Factoids & Trivia

• The video was made for Blondie's 1980 cover of "The Tide Is High," originally recorded by the Jamaican rocksteady group the Paragons in 1967.

• Debbie Harry has said she discovered the song on a compilation tape and felt it was too good to pass up.

• The production turns a straightforward reggae-pop song into a low-budget science-fiction fantasy, combining a flooded apartment, space surveillance, a rocket launch, and a masked extraterrestrial figure.

• "The Tide Is High" was the lead single from *Autoamerican* and became Blondie's third No. 1 single in the United States and their fifth UK No. 1.

• The video is notable for treating the song's romantic lyrics with playful visual illogic rather than attempting a literal relationship narrative.