She knew it back in 1987, when Heaven Is A Place On Earth first sky-rocketed her solo career worldwide and added yet another string to her bow as lead singer of the Go-Gos, one of the most successful female bands of all time. And she knows it in 2013, with the digital only release of brand new single Sun via Edsel on the 1 July 2013.
Thrillingly for fans, it’s her first new English-speaking material for 17 years and the starting point for a bumper year of Belinda Carlisle celebrations that both revisit her Virgin era back catalogue of 15 UK Top 40 hits and look forward to fresh collaborations both live and in the studio.
It was always going to take something very special to inspire Carlisle to return to her pop roots but Sun, an irresistible piece of shimmering, barnstorming, hook-laden anthemic pop, is it. Written by LA singer/songwriter/producer Gabe Lopez (New Kids On The Block, American Idol), Belinda Carlisle and fellow Go-Go Jane Wiedlin, produced, with modern electro sensibilities by Lopez and Ian Masterson. Coated with Belinda’s glorious, soaring, instantly identifiable vocals Sun is a stunning reminder of Carlisle’s timeless appeal as one of pop’s true survivors.
It’s 35 years since the punk-influenced Californian teenager sat on the kerb of a Hollywood sidewalk drinking beers with her gal pals and set about forming a band. Three years later, the Go-Gos not only had the number one album in America with Beauty and the Beat which included the smash hits We Got The Beat and Our Lips Are Sealed, but had broken down the door for every female guitar band that followed. As Q magazine noted, “Before riot grrrl, before ‘girl power’ before ladette culture had a name, there was the Go-Gos.” Rolling Stone went even further calling them, “the world’s best female rock band.”
The Go-Gos sold seven million albums and counted Kurt Cobain and British acts like The Specials and Madness amongst their biggest fans. But by 1985 Carlisle was ready for the fresh challenge of a solo career. Her Gold certified solo album debut, Belinda, was released in 1986 spawning the hit single, Mad About You, before her second album, Heaven On Earth, elevated her to the next level as one of the most successful female artists of the decade.
Heaven Is A Place On Earth is one of those career records that transcends its place in time. A number one hit in both the US and the UK (where it toppled Bill Medley & Jennifer Warnes’ The Time Of My Life and Pet Shop Boys’ Always On My Mind respectively) it reached the top spot in 8 different countries, earning Belinda Carlisle a prestigious Grammy nomination for Best Pop Female Vocalist in the esteemed company of Whitney Houston, Carly Simon, Suzanne Vega and Barbra Streisand.
The song drew stellar contributions to every aspect of its conception, from the iconic pop art video directed by Oscar winning actress Diane Keaton to the backing vocals supplied by Michelle Phillips of Sixties folk rock legends The Mamas And The Papas and Canadian multi-award winning songwriter Diane Warren, with 80s electro maestro Thomas ‘Hyperactive’ Dolby guesting on keyboards.
The album, Heaven On Earth, went platinum on both sides of the Atlantic, delivering two more Top 10 80s classics, that cemented Carlisle’s place in the pop firmament. The Diane Warren penned I Get Weak, with its killer hooks and another stylish Diane Keaton directed video featuring Madonna’s main squeeze at the time, Tony Ward, was another huge international hit as was Nowels and Shipley’s Circle In The Sand, with its glistening Thomas Dolby keyboards, a hark back to 1960s girl group The Shangri-Las and a re-mix by dance producer du jour William Orbit (Madonna, Prince, Seal).
Her 3rd solo album, the 1989 Runaway Horses, consolidated her position as one of the UK’s most popular female artists with a further 6 UK Top 40 hits; the emotive Summer Rain (still her personal favourite), another Nowels/Shipley soft rock standard We Want The Same Thing, La Luna, Vision Of You, Runaway Horses and Leave A Light On with its career highlight a rare as hen’s teeth post-Beatles musical contribution from George Harrison on guitar.
The reformation of the Go-Gos in 1990, at the behest of Oscar winner and political activist Jane Fonda for an anti-fur concert for PETA, and a cover of The Crystals’ Cool Jerk signalled a musical shift in Carlisle’s solo work as collaborations with fellow Go-Go Charlotte Caffey took her back to the 1960s Americana of her youth with the 1991 studio album Live Your Life Be Free and the further UK Top 40 hits the title track, Do You Feel Like I Feel and Half The World, co-written by Shakespear’s Sister’s Marcella Detroit.
Her 1993 solo album, Real – her 5th consecutive Top 10 UK album – heralded a further back-to-basics approach with Caffey, yielding one of her most enduring hits, the quirky Big Scary Animal and her 15th UK Top 40 hit, Lay Down Your Arms.
The shock of the 1994 Northridge earthquake in Los Angeles propelled Carlisle and her family to relocate to London and subsequently Provence. But her California roots were evident on her sixth solo studio album, A Woman and a Man in 1996 as she finally got to fulfil a lifelong dream to work in the studio with Beach Boys legend Brian Wilson who arranged and contributed backing vocals to the aptly titled track, California. “Working with Brian Wilson and George Harrison are my proudest collaborations,” says Belinda. “Being born and raised in Southern California and that beach culture, the Beach Boys are in my fibre and my being.”
A solo musical hiatus followed while Carlisle wrote her bestselling autobiography Lips Unsealed and continued to tour with the Go-Gos before she reinvented herself as a French chanteuse singing Francoise Hardy and Edith Piaf classics on the 2007 album, Voila, with Brian Eno on keyboards. She revisited her 80s catalogue along with Boy George, Bananarama and the Human League for as part of the Regeneration (in the US) and Here and Now tours (in the UK) in the summer of 2008 and 2009.
The 30th anniversary of Beauty and the Beat in 2011 saw the Go-Gos come full circle as they received a coveted star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in front of the very building where they first rehearsed at The Masque studios above the iconic Pussycat Theatre.
Now the release in 2013 of the new single, Sun, heralds the start of a thorough retrospective of Carlisle’s solo work. There are digital releases on Edsel of all 15 UK Top 40 singles with their original format B-sides, two digital only Greatest Hits compilations, and Edsel Deluxe 2CD+DVD re-mastered and digital editions of the four Virgin-era studio albums, Heaven on Earth, Runaway Horses, Live Your Life Be Free and Real on 26/08/2013 featuring a plethora of extras including an interview with Belinda on each of the albums, promo videos, and rare TV appearances.
“I really didn’t imagine I’d still be making music four decades later,” says Belinda. “In fact my only ambition in high school was to see the world or be Anita Ekberg in La Dolce Vita. I’d said I would never record any more English speaking pop. But my son, Dukey, who found Sun, thought otherwise. When I first heard Sun I immediately knew I had to record it. It’s the best song I’ve recorded since Heaven Is A Place On Earth. Now I’ve had such a good time making it that I’m working in the studio with Charlotte Caffey again.
My solo albums are work that I’m really proud of. Because I sing live so often they’ve remained very much part of my life. They hold up because they’re just really good songs. ”
A glittering past and a bright, shining future, as Belinda Carlisle fittingly sings on Sun: we are stardust.
The Rocker - The Artist Formerly Known As Zeitgeist. TAFKAZ 
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