One Way or Another

Nigel Harrison wrote the music that became "One Way or Another" while playing bass in Blondie. He described his original composition as a psychedelic, Ventures-like futuristic surf song gone wrong, and first played it for keyboardist Jimmy Destri, who took to it immediately. The two worked the piece into their live sets on the road before Debbie Harry picked up on it and added the "getcha-getcha-getcha" vocal hook. Harry later said she had worked the song out live with Harrison.

The lyrics came from a darker place. Harry wrote them after being stalked by a former boyfriend in 1973, when she was a member of The Stilettos. The constant calling and persistent harassment forced her to move out of New Jersey, and her former bandmate Elda Gentile recalled that the situation freaked everyone out, especially Chris Stein. Harry framed the words as though an ex-boyfriend were doing the stalking, deliberately injecting levity into a frightening episode as a kind of survival mechanism.

The track was recorded at New York's Record Plant between June and July 1978 for the album Parallel Lines, with producer Mike Chapman devising its chaotic ending. Released as the fourth North American single from the album, it followed the chart-topping "Heart of Glass" and reached number 24 in the US and number 7 in Canada. It was never issued as a single in the United Kingdom, though it charted there in 2013 after One Direction recorded a cover version for Comic Relief.