In 1980, Blondie's label attempted to release the world's first "video album" – a promotional VHS film featuring individual music videos for all 12 songs from their 1979 record Eat to the Beat. The band had agreed to the pioneering concept early on, but legal wrangling over royalties delayed its commercial release by roughly a year, meaning it finally reached shops just as Blondie were touring their next album, Autoamerican, rather than promoting Eat to the Beat as intended. The episode highlights how far ahead of the technology and industry infrastructure the band's ambitions were, arriving well before MTV launched or home video formats had settled.

The film, produced by Paul Flattery and directed by David Mallet, cost around $200,000 to make (equivalent to over $800,000 today) and was sold at a steep $39.95 retail price (about $162 in 2026 money). Delays stemmed largely from the lack of an industry-wide agreement with the American Federation of Musicians, forcing Chrysalis Records to place a share of proceeds into escrow while the business worked out royalty splits between artists and manufacturers. Despite executives' confidence that video albums represented the future of music consumption, the format never took off in the way predicted, not least because the rise of the portable Sony Walkman soon reshaped how listeners engaged with music.