A RANDOM A-Z OF SINGLES : X OFFENDER

The traffic to the blog slows up over the Festive period, and it’s therefore something of an opportunity to take a bit of a breather.

Over a period of 26 days, I’ll be posting a single never previously featured on its own before – it might have sneaked in as part of an ICA or within a piece looking at various tracks – with the idea of an edited cut’n’paste from somewhere (most likely wiki) and then all the songs from either the vinyl or CD.

X is for X Offender released by Blondie as a single in June 1976.

This is mostly adapted from wiki:-

X Offender is the debut single by Blondie. Written by Gary Valentine and Debbie Harry for the band’s self-titled debut album, it was released as the album’s lead single on Private Stock in June 1976.

The title of the song was originally “Sex Offender”. Bassist Gary Valentine originally wrote the song about an 18-year-old boy being arrested for having sex with his younger girlfriend. Debbie Harry changed the lyrics so that the song was about a prostitute being attracted to the police officer that had arrested her.

Private Stock insisted that the name of the single be changed to X Offender because they were nervous about the original title. It was released in mid-1976 with the B-side being In the Sun. Due to limited copies of the single being released and the subsequent popularity of the band, a copy of the original UK Private Stock single (catalogue number PVT 90)  is a sought-after rarity. The last copy to go on Discogs was in March 2019, and the seller was able to get £240. One of the reasons is that the mixes of both songs on the single are different from those on the Blondie album but then again, both were made available as bonus tracks on a 2001 CD re-release of the album whih is where these come from:-

mp3: Blondie – X Offender (single version)
mp3: Blondie – In The Sun (single version)

JC