They Say in Heaven POLLS Come First: The Belinda Carlisle Singles Poll

She cannot sing, but she sure got some great singles.

concur

I adore Beauty and the Beat while still thinking that Charlotte Caffey and Jane Wieldin could have done a better job than Belinda, whose quavery pipes often add nothing to the material, not even vulnerability. But in the context of megabudget production and songwriting (like Diane Warren's "I Get Weak") her inadequacies acquire more charm.

gotta be summer rain. though i remember being infatuated by leave a light on when i was about 7.

now see i agree she's not much of a singer, but i think she has a pretty strong vocal personality. it's not like you'd mistake her for anyone else. and i think her kind of cocky/sassy nasal snap is pretty key to the go-gos sound.

I always found her solo career stomach-churning, and I've probably said this before but like Janet Jackson, she was so much cuter when her face was a little round instead of those awful cheekbones. I knew a model like that once, too, who was just so much cuter with a little roundness on her.

BC sounds like a sheep bleating.

Yeah, thanks, Trayce. See I wouldn't want to have to listen to her again to find out. I'll take my Go-Go's just fine, and I'm not a huge fan of them, but that's definitely where I quit. In fact, I found out about this really fantastic b-side a few months ago by them called "How Much More". Apparently that was the b-side to "We Got The Beat" (a single I don't really understand why I didn't own back in the day). Also I didn't know this single was actually released on Stiff Records! That's really neat. It's amazing what you can learn on the internet when you're not even trying.

Oh yeah I like the gogos!

Yeah, I like 'em too, but album-wise, it's always been tough with them for me. In fact, not wanting to derail this thread, but it's somewhat of an irritation for me now that I've never found an all-female band to completely trip over. The only exception I can think of is early Runaways before their line-up changed.

Way off topic now, but do you like Electrelane, Bimble? The Organ was pretty good too.

BC's solo stuff reminds me of my first job, in the mailroom of the foreign office in Canberra. We were buried in the basement and didnt have to deal with customers or many staff. Tucked away down there no one cared for what we did in our cement tomb, so the stereo would often play everything from Blue Oyster Cult to Dead Can Dance to Julio Englasias.

But then someone started playing the radio. The Clear Channel style radio. And BC sticks in my mind as torture of the first order in that environment. Uuugh.

Hahahha. Oh yeah. When I turned on the TV and started seeing BC videos...that was truly the rotting end of the overblown major label trashy late 80's. I was on to bigger and better things by then, man. I had a friend from across the country who was sending me fantastic British indie records in the mail and shit. I didn't need that crap.

Johnny, I didn't realize Electralane were an all-female band. I recognize the name, and thought I'd heard them before, but I must be confusing them with some other band with a similar name. Their stuff on myspace sounds really nice, if a bit imitative of Stereolab at times.

Trying The Organ now, and they're not bad either. Ha! Boy, has that singer got the Debbie Harry thing down! :)

Mad About You

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

New single is okay, alas.

so Belinda Carlisle has lead a charmed life. Her husband, James Mason's son, was protocol chief in the Reagan administration and did this:

In 1986, Reagan appointed him to The Commission for the Preservation of America's Heritage Abroad, and made him a special advisor to the President's Council on Physical Fitness and Sports.

In addition, she did coke until fairly recently and produced a gay son.

Fucking charmed life.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0V21A9VGpA

When you told Nancy Reagan the story about how we were at the golf club and whatever and he was like being affectionate with me or whatever and the people at the golf club thought I was his boy toy. I said, dad, you can't say that to Nancy Reagan and he said, c'mon! she's down with the gays!

I just ordered her book on Amazon (it's dirt cheap now). Anybody read it?

a lot of coke!

I want Belinda Carlisle to be my mother-in-law!

my god "Mad About You" is perfec

t

Someone can also explain what on earth George Harrison was doing playing on "Leave a Light On."

"Leave a Light On" features George Harrison on slide guitar; Carlisle recalls: "Rick [Nowels] said we should get someone cool and with a distinctive style to play the lead guitar part. I thought for a moment and said 'What about George Harrison?' I had met George briefly a few years earlier in San Remo Italy and Morgan [Mason, Carlisle's husband] through his work on Sex Lies and Videotape" - a film Mason had produced for Harrison's HandMade Films - "knew someone who was close to [Harrison] and able to get word to him. George responded right away, saying he'd love to help out."

Olivia said he loved her voice.

George didn't suffer fools gladly so...I believe him? Anyway, the slide part is instantly identfiable.

A little disappointed that the story isn't that George wandered in from a Wilburys tracking session, and also it ultimately didn't end with Belinda signing on as "Wendy Wilbury" for Vol. 3.

...and this just got dug up on another forum, re: Carlisle, Mason & sex, lies and videotape:

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1989-05-27-ca-601-story.html

Eighteen months ago, two of Mason’s friends--independent producer Nick Wechsler and Soderbergh’s agent, the late Ann Dollard of Leading Artists--showed him the script for “sex, lies and videotape.”

Mason thought it was “extraordinary.”

“But the acid test,” he says, “was whether my wife, who never reads scripts, would like it. So I asked her to read the first five pages and see if she got bored.”

Carlisle couldn’t put it down. “She told me I had to get it made,” he says.

...

While Tenenbaum approached a friend at the film company, Mason went after an even bigger gun--Richard Branson, the billionaire chairman of the parent firm Virgin Group whose music division just happens to sell Belinda Carlisle’s albums overseas.

“We had a relationship,” Mason says offhandedly. “It was serendipity.”

Happy birthday!

https://i.imgur.com/AXhY5yW.gif

Saw this on a sponsored/suggested FB post from a Beatle fan page:

“The best slide solo I ever played was on... what's her name? That girl singer who used to be with that all-girl band? ... Belinda_Carlisle of the Go-Go's! That's who it was. I played on one of her albums.” - George