Belinda Carlisle

• 1. Introduction

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  Belinda Carlisle spent the third day of a London hotel stay in 2005 pacing a room thick with cigarette smoke. She had been awake and using cocaine for most of three days. She looked in a mirror and later said she saw no light and no soul in her own eyes. Then she heard a loud voice tell her she would die in that room if she carried on. She understood it as a hallucination, and it frightened her enough to change direction. The woman in that room was the singer behind some of the most recognizable pop songs of the 1980s. She had fronted one of America's biggest bands, then outsold most of her peers on her own. How does a child from a poor, restless household end up there? How does a short stint in a punk band lead to a place at the front of a pop group? And what was left of her, years later, when the hits had stopped being the point?

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• 2. A Restless Childhood

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  Belinda Jo Carlisle was born on the 17th of August 1958 in Hollywood, Los Angeles. Her father, Harold, worked at a gas station, and her mother, Joanne, stayed at home. Joanne had met Harold when she was eighteen. He was twenty years older, and Belinda arrived nine months later. She was named for Joanne's favorite film, Johnny Belinda, released in 1948.

  She was the eldest of seven children, with three brothers and three sisters. When she was five, her father walked out on the family. Carlisle has said that poverty shaped most of her childhood. As a teenager she remembers owning, in her words, "like, two outfits." Her mother was devoutly religious and her father was not. In an interview with Slash magazine, Carlisle called herself a reject from a Southern Baptist household.

  Joanne later married Walt Kurczeski. Carlisle describes him as an alcoholic and says their relationship was tumultuous. She nonetheless took his last name during her high school years. The family kept moving, from Simi Valley to Reseda, and then to Burbank when Belinda was seven. At ten she began to care about music. She names the Beach Boys, Cat Stevens, the Stylistics and the Animals as her first favorites.

  Another move took the family to Thousand Oaks, California. At Colina Junior High School she was a third-string guard on the boys' basketball team. At Newbury Park High School she became a cheerleader. Her teenage years turned rebellious. "By the time I hit fourteen, I'd gone really wild," she said. "I ran away from home, smoked pot, dropped acid... you name it, I'd try it."

  After school she worked at a House of Fabrics store and as a photocopier clerk at the Hilton Hotels Corporation in Los Angeles. She also signed up for night classes at a beauty college but quit within the first year. She was nineteen when she left home to chase a career in music.

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• 3. From Germs to Go-Go's

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  In 1977, Carlisle's first job in music was behind a drum kit. She joined the punk band the Germs and took the stage name Dottie Danger. Lorna Doom, whom she had met in an art class at Newbury Park High School, brought her in. The stint was brief. She came down with mononucleosis, and she never recorded with the band or played a live show.

  According to Germs guitarist Pat Smear, she introduced her friend Donna Rhia on the way out, and Rhia took the drummer's seat. Carlisle still left one trace. On the live album Germicide, from a 1977 show at the Whisky a Go Go, her voice can be heard introducing the band. Around then she also sang some backing vocals for Black Randy and the Metrosquad.

  Soon afterward she co-founded a group of her own, first called the Misfits. The early members were Margot Olavarria, Elissa Bello and Jane Wiedlin, and the band formed in 1978. Olavarria and Bello did not last. The lineup that settled was Carlisle, Wiedlin, Charlotte Caffey, Kathy Valentine and Gina Schock. Caffey had started as a bassist and moved to guitar, while Valentine moved from guitar to bass. Schock played drums.

  None of the five had much training. Carlisle remembers using tape as fret markers while they worked out their first songs. "Charlotte had to show us how to plug in our amps," she said. The group renamed itself the Go-Go's, and its next stop was a record deal with I.R.S. Records.

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• 4. A Number One Album

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  In 1981, the Go-Go's debut album, Beauty and the Beat, reached number 1. No other all-female band that wrote its own songs and played its own instruments has ever done that. The record carried "We Got the Beat" and "Our Lips Are Sealed." It helped bring new wave music onto American radio. Across their career, the band has sold more than seven million records worldwide.

  Two more albums followed on I.R.S. Records. Vacation, from 1982, went Gold. Talk Show arrived in 1984, and its single "Head over Heels" climbed to number 11. That same year Carlisle tried acting. In the film Swing Shift, she appeared as a band singer in a cast that included Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell.

  The group has since collected plenty of recognition. In 1999, VH1 ranked Carlisle with the Go-Go's at number 76 on its list of the 100 Greatest Women of Rock & Roll. In 2011, the band received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. The band itself came apart in 1985, and Carlisle was suddenly a singer without a group.

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• 5. Solo Stardom

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  Carlisle's solo debut, Belinda, came out in 1986 on I.R.S. Records. It went Gold in the United States and Platinum in Canada. Its summer single "Mad About You" peaked at number 3 in the United States and reached the Top 10 in Australia. Andy Taylor of Duran Duran played guitar on some tracks and appeared in the video. Her friends from the Go-Go's turned up on the record too. Charlotte Caffey wrote the Motown-flavored "I Feel the Magic." Susanna Hoffs co-wrote "I Need a Disguise," with Jane Wiedlin singing backing vocals. The album also included a cover of Freda Payne's "Band of Gold."

  Her songs soon started appearing in films. "Shot in the Dark" was used in the thriller Out of Bounds. "In My Wildest Dreams" played in Mannequin, and "Dancing in the City" in the Whoopi Goldberg movie Burglar.

  Then came Heaven on Earth in 1987, a sleek power-pop record far from the 1960s flavor of her debut. MCA released it in the United States and Virgin Records in the United Kingdom. It reached the Top 5 in the UK and Australia and earned a Grammy nomination. Its title single, "Heaven Is a Place on Earth," went to number 1 in the United States and the UK. Academy Award-winning actress Diane Keaton directed the video. A dance mix of the song also topped the Billboard dance chart.

  The follow-ups kept coming. "I Get Weak," written by Diane Warren, reached number 2 in the United States and number 10 in the UK. "Circle in the Sand" made the Top 10 in the United States, the UK and Germany. "World Without You" was another British hit. Her Good Heavens world tour sold out Wembley Arena in London.

  Runaway Horses followed on the 23rd of October 1989. It made the Top 5 in Australia and the UK and went double platinum in Australia. It went platinum in the UK and Canada. "Leave a Light On" reached number 11 in the United States and the Top 5 in the UK, Australia and Canada. She also sang a duet, "Blue Period," with Pat DiNizio of the Smithereens. In the United States, "Summer Rain" reached number 30 in early 1990, and in Australia it reached number 6. By the end of 1990, the Go-Go's had regrouped for a tour supporting their first greatest hits album. Band members used the tour to back an anti-fur campaign with the animal rights group PETA.

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• 6. Across the Atlantic

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  In 1991, "Do You Feel Like I Feel?" peaked at number 73 on the Billboard Hot 100. It was the last Carlisle single ever to enter that chart. Its video borrowed from the B movie Attack of the 50 Foot Woman. The song came from Live Your Life Be Free, an album that returned to 1960s-style pop. Rick Nowels wrote and produced most of it, and Carlisle co-wrote two tracks. Her popularity in America had cooled, but elsewhere the album did well. The title track reached number 12 in the UK and number 13 in Australia. The album itself made the UK Top 10 and went Gold there.

  She now recorded for Virgin Records and stayed busy in Europe and Australia. Her 1992 compilation The Best of Belinda, Volume 1 hit number 1 in the UK. It went double platinum there and platinum in Australia. In 1993 she released Real, made without Nowels. Carlisle co-wrote and co-produced much of it with her old bandmate Charlotte Caffey. It was her fifth straight UK Top 10 album, peaking at number 9. "Big Scary Animal" reached number 12 in the UK. That year she also sang on the Lemonheads album Come on Feel the Lemonheads.

  The Go-Go's reunited in 1994 for the double-CD Return to the Valley of the Go-Go's, which included three new songs. The band split again soon after the promotional tour. Carlisle went back to the studio and to Rick Nowels. In 1996, A Woman & a Man came out on the Chrysalis label in the UK and Australia. "In Too Deep" reached number 6 in the UK, her first Top 10 there in six years. "Always Breaking My Heart," written and produced by Per Gessle of Roxette, reached number 8. For the song "California," Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys arranged parts and sang backing vocals. The album went Gold in the UK. It reached American listeners in the summer of 1997 through the small Ark21 label.

  That same year she recorded "I Won't Say (I'm in Love)" for Disney's Hercules. In 1999 she toured Europe as an opening act for Cher on the Believe Tour. A double-disc compilation, A Place on Earth: The Greatest Hits, made the UK Top 20 and went Gold.

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• 7. Reunions and Reinventions

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  The Go-Go's came back in 2001 with God Bless the Go-Go's, their first album of new material in years. Billie Joe Armstrong of Green Day co-wrote its only single, "Unforgiven." Critics were lukewarm. A reviewer for AllMusic said the old sound was intact but the big hits were missing. The record still reached number 57 on the Billboard 200. In August 2001, Carlisle also posed nude for a Playboy cover story.

  In 2007 she released Voila, her first solo album in more than ten years. Rykodisc put it out on the 5th of February in the UK and the 6th of February in the United States. John Reynolds produced it, and Brian Eno played keyboards. The songs were French pop and chanson standards, including numbers by Françoise Hardy and Édith Piaf.

  In early 2009 she joined the eighth season of Dancing with the Stars, paired with Jonathan Roberts. On the 17th of March she became the first contestant sent home. That October she took over the role of Velma Von Tussle in the London West End production of Hairspray at the Shaftesbury Theatre. She stayed until late January 2010, when Siobhán McCarthy replaced her. In June 2010 her memoir, Lips Unsealed, was published. It became a New York Times Best Seller.

  The Go-Go's toured the United States in 2011 and 2012, including the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles and the Hollywood Bowl. In March 2013 Carlisle released "Sun," her first American single in seventeen years. She wrote it with Jane Wiedlin and Gabe Lopez. It did not chart but drew good reviews. Wilder Shores, a collection of Gurmukhi chants, followed in September 2017.

  In 2021 the Go-Go's were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and played "Vacation," "Our Lips Are Sealed" and "We Got the Beat." Her former Germs bandmate Pat Smear was inducted the same day with Foo Fighters. A 2022 UK tour with Billy Idol was scrapped, and in 2023 Carlisle declared the group disbanded. They still reunited for concerts in 2025.

  On the 17th of May 2023, Carlisle released Kismet, a five-track EP with songs by Diane Warren. It was her first English-language pop release in twenty-seven years. In February 2024, California's governor Gavin Newsom inducted her and the Go-Go's into the California Hall of Fame. Her ninth album, Once Upon a Time in California, arrived on the 29th of August 2025, after the single "The Air That I Breathe" on the 6th of June.

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• 8. Sound and Style

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  Critics have long praised the dynamic soprano range of Carlisle's voice. They have also struggled to label it. Some call her a punk diva and others a pop princess. Music writers such as Greil Marcus hear faint punk traces in the early Go-Go's records. He suggests those traces came from her short time with the Germs. Critics also noted that the group blended punk with the sound of California surf music.

  Her solo records moved away from that. Starting with Belinda in 1986, reviewers described the polish of mainstream pop. Yet Carlisle herself has said she never listened to much pop. In a 2013 interview she explained that jazz players such as Miles Davis had recently inspired her.

  Her own taste began in a record shop. As a teenager she saw Iggy Pop on the cover of the Stooges album Raw Power, from 1973. She credits it with opening the door to the Velvet Underground, the New York Dolls, Roxy Music and the Sex Pistols. One detail of her stage act is easy to spot from the back row. She is known for performing barefoot.

  By the time she was making her first records with the Go-Go's, Carlisle had developed a serious cocaine and alcohol addiction. It would run for thirty years. An eating disorder grew alongside it. She says it began with media comments about her appearance, and heavy cocaine use helped keep her weight down. She also used LSD, quaaludes and MDA regularly, as a teenager and as an adult. In 2017 she told The Guardian she could not believe she was still alive.

  Drugs strained her relationships in the early 1980s. She spent two years with Bill Bateman, drummer for the Blasters, then ended it abruptly after taking up with Mike Marshall of the Los Angeles Dodgers. In 1986 she married Morgan Mason, a political operative and film producer. He is the son of actor James Mason and actress Pamela Kellino. He appeared in her videos for "Mad About You" and "Heaven Is a Place on Earth." Their son, James Duke Mason, was born in 1992 and became a politician, writer, activist and political commentator.

  After the 1994 Northridge earthquake the family moved to Fréjus, in south-eastern France, and divided their time between there and the United States. They moved to Bangkok in 2017 and, as of 2024, live in Mexico City. Her own parents and siblings remained distant. In a 1990 interview with Spin she said she felt guilty at times about her success.

  Sobriety came with new practices. Carlisle has followed Nichiren Buddhism as a member of Soka Gakkai International since 2002, and she chants Nam Myōhō Renge Kyō daily. She credits it with helping her stay sober. She took up Kundalini yoga while pregnant in 1991 and 1992 and qualified as a teacher after getting sober. She told The Sydney Morning Herald that turning 40, in 1998, felt like a real passage.

  Activism followed. Carlisle went public in her support of LGBT rights after her son came out to her at fourteen, in 2006. In 2014 she co-founded Animal People Alliance, a nonprofit in Calcutta, India. It raises money for the care of street animals and trains and employs impoverished women to provide it. "We are teaching people that animals have feelings," she says. In May 2024 the Harvey Milk Foundation awarded her the Harvey Milk Medal, presented by her son and Stuart Milk. A month later Yoga Gives Back gave her its 2024 YGB Namaste Award for her animal advocacy.

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