Autoamerican

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.

Producer Mike Chapman insisted the band record in Los Angeles. Guitarist Chris Stein lamented: "Every day we get up, stagger into the blinding sun, [and] drive past a huge Moon-mobile from some ancient sci-fi movie."^[9] Drummer Clem Burke welcomed the change: "Autoamerican was fun. We got to spend two months in California. I'm always up for a free ride."^[10] However, the band insisted on the cover artwork shot being from their hometown, posing on a roof near New York's Broadway and Eighth (more precisely 300 Mercer Street). The image was taken from a commissioned painting by artist Martin Hoffman (1935–2013).^[11]

In a 2020 interview with American Songwriter, to mark the 40th anniversary of the album, Stein revealed the intended title was Coca Cola, as it sounded "very American", but The Coca-Cola Company declined the idea.^[12]

The band released two singles from this album, "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 and number four in Australia. Though these singles proved successful, the record company was initially hesitant about the album's commercial prospects. Burke recalled, "When we gave the album to the record company, they basically said they didn't hear any hits. And that was their quote: 'We don't hear a single'. It had two number ones! And both were very innovative as well."^[13]

Autoamerican was digitally remastered and reissued with two bonus tracks by Chrysalis Records in the UK in 1994 which included the extended 12″ Special Disco Mix versions of "Rapture" and its B-side "Live It Up", from 1981. The album was again remastered and re-released by EMI-Capitol in 2001, again featuring the extended version of "Rapture" along with the full-length version of their number-one single "Call Me" (from the film soundtrack to American Gigolo), as well as "Suzy & Jeffrey" which was originally the B-side to "The Tide Is High".

In Rolling Stone, Tom Carson said, "Autoamerican is a terrible album. After Parallel Lines gave Chris Stein a carte blanche, it was only a matter of time until he started living out his fantasies of himself as a deep thinker. Stein is no longer depriving the world of his "genius", because Autoamerican is his LP all the way. Indeed, it’s such an anthology of intellectual onanism that it’s almost the rock equivalent of a godawful Ken Russell movie. I wonder if the reason Chris Stein is so eager to proclaim the death of pop culture is so he can beat the hyenas to its bones."^[14]

Credits adapted from the liner notes of Autoamerican.^[15]