As was customary for a Blondie album, No Exit dabbled in many genres, including pop, reggae, country, and hip hop. Mike Chapman, who had produced all but the first two of Blondie's previous albums, produced some of the early demos for the album, though final production of the album fell to Craig Leon. A cover of The Shangri-Las' 1965 song "Out in the Streets" was also included on the album. It was originally recorded by the band in 1975 while they were trying to get a record deal. The demo version was first issued on EMI's 1994 anthology The Platinum Collection and was later included on the 2001 remastered version of the band's eponymous debut studio album. A comeback promotional tour, the No Exit Tour, was launched preceding the release of the album, which spanned 13 months and visited Europe, North America and Oceania.
Release and reception
No Exit reached number three on the UK Albums Chart, and was certified gold by the British Phonographic Industry for sales in excess of 100,000 copies. It was preceded by the single "Maria", which became Blondie's sixth UK number one, exactly 20 years after the band's first number one, "Heart of Glass", making them the first American band to have chart-topping UK singles in three different decades: 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. A second single, "Nothing Is Real but the Girl", peaked at number 26 on the UK Singles Chart. The title track, "No Exit", was released as a limited-edition third single in Europe, and is a fusion of classical, hip hop and rock, and featured raps by Mobb Deep, Coolio, U-God, and Inspectah Deck. The album was released in several editions in different countries with various bonus tracks, mainly live versions of songs recorded during the band's No Exit Tour. The album was also reissued in 2001 along with all of Blondie's other studio albums, this time including three bonus tracks. Chris Stein commented on the title of the album in a 2004 interview: "The title was taken from a Sartre play, which says there's no madness in individuals, it's all in groups. I think that's probably what all these reality TV shows are about. Maybe we were a reality TV show before there was reality TV."
Track listing
Notes
On the 2001 reissue, tracks 15 to 17 are sequenced as one track with a total duration of 17:51.
