Autoamerican

Autoamerican is the fifth studio album by American rock band Blondie. It was released in the US on November 19, 1980 and in the UK on November 29, 1980 and reached in the UK charts, in the US, and in Australia. The album spawned two singles, "The Tide Is High" and "Rapture". "The Tide Is High" hit number one in several countries, including the US and the UK. "Rapture" became the first rap song ever to reach number one on the singles chart in the US. It also reached number five in the UK, number four in Australia, and number three in Canada.

==Background== The album was a radical departure for the band, with the opening track "Europa" setting the pace. The track is a dramatic instrumental overture featuring orchestral arrangements and ending with vocalist Debbie Harry declaiming a passage about automobile culture over an electronic soundtrack. Besides rock and pop tracks, the band explored a wide range of other musical genres: "Here's Looking at You" and "Faces" show jazz and blues influences, "The Tide Is High" was a cover of the Paragons' 1967 Jamaican rocksteady song, whereas "Rapture" combined funk, rock, jazz, and even saw them embracing the then-emerging genre of rap. The closing track, "Follow Me", was a cover of a torch song from Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe's 1960 Broadway musical Camelot.