Loosely conceptual, “let’s try something different” albums like Autoamerican are the reason best-ofs exist. Eat To The Beat sounded like a lot of things, but an encroaching rut wasn’t one of them, so the band’s decision to push their natural eclecticism to more absurd lengths speaks to an excess of restlessness that tries to do on one LP what The Clash’s Sandinista! — released one month later — let sprawl more ambitiously (and successfully) over three. Like their increasingly NYC-obsessed cohorts from across the pond, Blondie pulled off a memorable hip-hop pastiche in “Rapture,” even if Debbie’s rambling flow and man-from-Mars silliness makes “Magnificent Seven” mic controller Joe Strummer sound like Rakim in comparison. “The Tide Is High,” another gem from their lineage of left-field covers, turned a Paragons rocksteady classic into a faithful yet distinctly unique homage, and proved to be the last time until the ’90s that the UK charts agreed with their desire to be somebody’s #1. (“Rapture” did top the Billboard Hot 100 the following year, making it the first rap track — or at least first with rap verses — to hit #1, and the last until “Ice Ice Baby” in 1990.)

But there’s no third single, and not just because American Gigolo theme “Call Me” proved to be a bigger smash than any candidate on Autoamerican. “Live It Up” is the closest the rest of the album gets to Blondie’s end-of-the-70s mixture of new wave grit and dancefloor glamour, but good luck selling America on an uptempo disco track in November 1980. Other side one cuts, like the hard-charging gallop of “Go Through It” and the jangly glimmer of “Angels On The Balcony,” feel like precedents for later, more famous and substantial ideas from Adam & the Ants and the Go-go’s, respectively. But Blondie strayed far out of their element for a good chunk of the record, and not just because producer Mike Chapman shanghaied them out to Los Angeles to record the thing. The dramatic pomp of orchestral instrumental opener (!) “Europa” and the billowy lightheadedness of Camelot ballad “Follow Me” prove to be the wrong kind of Hollywood for a band whose lead singer fared better working with David Cronenberg and John Waters. And the processed torch songs (“Here’s Looking At You”; “Faces”) probably would’ve worked better if they at least had a bit of Tom Waits gloom casting a smoky pallor overhead — or at least what we got from the Jazz Passengers 17 years later. In a better world, this album would’ve been an overambitious detour — in this one, it was the beginning of the end, at least for a long time.