Belinda Carlisle

Early life and education

Carlisle was born in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, to Harold Carlisle, a gas station employee, and his wife, Joanne (née Thompson), a homemaker. Her mother met her father, who was 20 years her senior, at age 18, and Carlisle was born nine months later. She was named after her mother's favorite film, Johnny Belinda (1948). Carlisle was the first of seven siblings; she has three brothers and three sisters. When she was five years old, Carlisle's father abandoned their family, and she has stated that she spent most of her childhood impoverished. As a teenager, she recalled owning "like, two outfits." According to Carlisle, her mother was very religious, while her father was not. In an interview with Slash magazine, she described herself as a reject from a Southern Baptist household.

Her mother later married Walt Kurczeski, who Carlisle says was an alcoholic and with whom she had a tumultuous relationship. She took on his last name during her high school years. The family moved frequently during her childhood, from Simi Valley to Reseda, before settling in Burbank when Carlisle was seven years old. At age ten, Carlisle began to express interest in music; she has identified the Beach Boys, Cat Stevens, the Stylistics, and the Animals as being early musical influences.

The family relocated again during Carlisle's adolescence, this time to Thousand Oaks, California. Carlisle attended Colina Junior High School in Thousand Oaks, where she was a third-string guard on the boys' basketball team. Later, she attended Newbury Park High School, where she was a cheerleader. During her teenage years, Carlisle became 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 high school, Carlisle worked at a House of Fabrics store and as a photocopier clerk at the Hilton Hotels Corporation in Los Angeles. She took night classes attending beauty college, but dropped out in the first year. At the age of 19, Carlisle left home to pursue a career in music.

Career

Early ventures and the Go-Go's

Carlisle's first venture into music was in 1977 as drummer for the punk rock band the Germs, under the name Dottie Danger. She was recruited into the band by Lorna Doom, whom she had met in an art class while a student at Newbury Park High School. However, her time in the band was short, owing to her contracting mononucleosis, and she never recorded or performed live with the Germs. According to Germs guitarist Pat Smear, upon quitting, she introduced her friend Donna Rhia, who became her replacement. Carlisle does appear on one recording introducing the band at a 1977 performance at the Whisky a Go Go, heard on the live album Germicide (1977). Around this time, Carlisle provided some backing vocals for Black Randy and the Metrosquad.

Soon after leaving the Germs, she co-founded the Go-Go's (originally named the Misfits) with friends and fellow musicians Margot Olavarria, Elissa Bello, and Jane Wiedlin. Olavarria and Bello were soon out of the group, and the new line-up included Carlisle, Wiedlin, bassist-turned-guitarist Charlotte Caffey, guitarist-turned-bassist Kathy Valentine, and drummer Gina Schock. All five women were largely untrained musicians, and Carlisle recalls having to use tape as fret markers during their initial songwriting: "[Charlotte] had to show us how to plug in our amps," she said.

The Go-Go's went on to become one of the most successful American bands of the 1980s, helping usher new wave music into popular American radio, and becoming the first and only all-female band that wrote their own music and played their own instruments to ever achieve a number 1 album, Beauty and the Beat (1981), which featured the hits "We Got the Beat" and "Our Lips Are Sealed". The Go-Go's recorded two more albums on I.R.S. Records, including 1982's Vacation, which went Gold. "Head over Heels", from their 1984 album Talk Show, made it to number 11. In 1984, Carlisle made a foray into acting in the movie Swing Shift, appearing as a band singer alongside Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell.

Solo career

The Go-Go's broke up in 1985, and Carlisle embarked on a solo career. Carlisle's debut solo album Belinda was released in 1986, also on I.R.S. Records. This album was successful in North America and was certified Gold in the United States and Platinum in Canada. Her summer hit "Mad About You" peaked at number 3 in the United States, and charted in the Top 10 in Australia. "Mad About You" was followed by the Motown-influenced single "I Feel the Magic" written by Charlotte Caffey, and by a cover version of the Freda Payne song "Band of Gold". All three songs were included on her debut album. The single "Since You've Gone", co-written by Lindsey Buckingham of Fleetwood Mac, was used only for promotion. Susanna Hoffs co-wrote the single "I Need a Disguise" in which she also sang backing vocals along with Jane Wiedlin. Duran Duran's Andy Taylor played guitar on some album tracks and appeared in her "Mad About You" music video. During this time, Carlisle also had songs featured on movie soundtracks, notably "In My Wildest Dreams" from the movie Mannequin (1987), "Shot in the Dark" from the Anthony Michael Hall thriller Out of Bounds (1986), as well as "Dancing in the City" from the Whoopi Goldberg movie Burglar (1987).

The musical style of 1987's Heaven on Earth eschewed the 1960s-influenced pop of Carlisle's debut album in favor of slickly produced 1980s power pop. It was released in the United States through MCA, and in the United Kingdom through Virgin Records. The album became a Top 5 bestseller in the UK and Australia, and was nominated for a Grammy Award. The album's first single, "Heaven Is a Place on Earth", topped the singles charts in the United States and the UK, with the dance mix of the song also topping the Billboard dance chart in the US. The promotional video was directed by Academy Award–winning American actress Diane Keaton. The second single from the album was the Diane Warren–penned "I Get Weak", which peaked at number 2 in the United States and number 10 in the UK. The third single from the album was "Circle in the Sand", another Top 10 hit in the United States, the UK, and Germany. "World Without You" was another British hit. Following the success of the album, Carlisle embarked on the Good Heavens world tour, which sold out Wembley Arena in London.

Carlisle's follow-up to the success of Heaven on Earth was Runaway Horses, released on October 23, 1989. The album hit the Top 5 in both Australia and the UK, certified double platinum in Australia and platinum in the UK and in Canada. The first release, "Leave a Light On", peaked at number 11 in the United States, and became another Top 5 smash in the UK, Australia and Canada. That year, Carlisle also performed co-lead vocals with the Smithereens in a duet with the band's lead vocalist Pat DiNizio on the song "Blue Period". The song was featured on their third album 11.

Later recordings and the Go-Go's reunions

In 2001, the Go-Go's reunited again and released an album of new material, God Bless the Go-Go's. Green Day's lead vocalist Billie Joe Armstrong co-wrote the only released single "Unforgiven". God Bless the Go-Go's received mixed reviews from critics. Peter Fawthrop of AllMusic wrote "Every bit as Go-Go's, that is, as their non-hits and less remarkable material. While the Go-Go's sound is intact, there is not a "We Got the Beat" or a "Head Over Heels" to be found. It is feasible that in this age of pop rebirth, the Go-Go's decided it was now or never ... The album doesn't attempt to update the band's sound with hip-hop moves or electronic frippery, for which God should bless 'em, indeed. The girls' hold on the current pop world remains so strong that Green Day's Billie Joe Armstrong co-writes a song ("Unforgiven") in impeccable Go-Go's drag". In spite of the mixed reviews, the album charted in the US Billboard 200, peaking at number 57. Around the time of the Go-Go's definitive reunion tour, Carlisle appeared nude for the cover feature and a full pictorial of the August 2001 edition of Playboy.

In 2007, Carlisle released her seventh album, Voila, which was her first full-length solo album in more than ten years. The album was produced by John Reynolds and included Brian Eno on keyboards. Consisting of a mix of French pop tunes and chanson standards, including covers of Françoise Hardy and Édith Piaf classics, Voila was released via Rykodisc in the UK on February 5 and in the United States the following day, February 6, 2007. In early 2009, Carlisle was on the eighth season of Dancing with the Stars, paired with Jonathan Roberts. She was the first star to be eliminated from the competition, on March 17. In October 2009, Carlisle took over the role of Velma Von Tussle in London's West End production of Hairspray at the Shaftesbury Theatre. She remained with the show until late January 2010 and was replaced by Siobhán McCarthy.

Between 2011 and 2012, Carlisle embarked on a United States tour with the Go-Go's, which included concerts at the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles in August 2011 and the Hollywood Bowl in September 2012. In March 2013, Carlisle released her first US single in seventeen years titled "Sun", an up-tempo pop song, which was included on ICON – The Best of Belinda Carlisle, a new greatest hits compilation album. The single was also released in the United Kingdom. The song was written by Carlisle, Jane Wiedlin of the Go-Go's and singer-songwriter Gabe Lopez. Lopez also produced the song. While the track did not chart, it received positive reviews.

Musical style and influences

Carlisle has been noted by critics for her dynamic soprano vocal range. While Carlisle's discography both with the Go-Go's and in her solo work has been predominately characterized as pop music, some music scholars such as Greil Marcus have noted a confluence of subtle punk influences as well as pop rock, specifically in the Go-Go's early releases (Marcus suggests that any traces of punk influence were carried over from Carlisle's brief tenure in the Germs).

Carlisle has been alternately described by critics as a "punk diva" and "pop princess". As a singer in the Go-Go's, Carlisle was associated with the new wave genre, and the band was remarked by critics for their style that "inject[ed] punk with the sound of California surf music." Her subsequent solo releases, beginning with her self-titled solo debut, Belinda (1986), were described by critics as more polished contemporary pop music.

Her early inspirations during her childhood were the Beach Boys, Cat Stevens, the Stylistics, and the Animals. As a teenager, she saw Iggy Pop on the cover of the Stooges' Raw Power (1973) in a record store, an album which she credited as a gateway exposing her to punk and art rock acts such as the Velvet Underground, New York Dolls, Roxy Music, and the Sex Pistols. In a 2013 interview, Carlisle stated that despite having recorded an abundance of it throughout her career, she "didn't really listen to pop music", and had recently been inspired by jazz artists such as Miles Davis.

Carlisle is known for performing barefoot on stage.

Personal life

Relationships and family

Carlisle had a two-year relationship with Bill Bateman, drummer for the Blasters, in the early 1980s. She broke up abruptly with Bateman because she had taken up with Mike Marshall of the Los Angeles Dodgers. Her cocaine use was a negative influence on these relationships.

In 1986, Carlisle married political operative and film producer Morgan Mason, son of English actor James Mason and actress Pamela Kellino. He made appearances in Carlisle's music videos "Mad About You" and "Heaven Is a Place on Earth". They have one son, James Duke Mason, a politician, writer, activist, and political commentator, who was born in 1992. After the 1994 Northridge earthquake, Carlisle and her family moved to Fréjus in south-eastern France. They lived between there and the U.S. In 2017, the couple moved to Bangkok, Thailand. As of 2024, they now reside in Mexico City, Mexico.

In a 1990 interview with Spin, Carlisle stated that she was not close with her siblings or parents, saying: "I want to be close to them. I kind of feel uncomfortable. I think I feel guilty sometimes about my success in some ways."

Health

During the initial stages of her tenure with the Go-Go's, Carlisle developed a serious addiction to cocaine and alcohol that went on to span 30 years. Simultaneously, she had developed an eating disorder which she said stemmed from media comments regarding her appearance; her excessive cocaine use helped keep her weight down. Additionally, Carlisle admitted to using LSD, quaaludes, and MDA regularly as both a teenager and adult. In a 2017 interview, she told The Guardian that she "couldn't believe [she wasn't] dead".

In 2005, at the height of her drug abuse, Carlisle spent three days isolated in a London hotel room binging cocaine. At one point, she recalled that she looked at herself in the mirror and was alarmed that she "didn't see a light or a soul" in her eyes. "I sat in my room and did [cocaine] all evening. Between lines [of cocaine], I smoked cigarettes, played games on my laptop, and paced the room. I must have smoked ten packs of cigarettes in two days." On the third day, Carlisle said she had a vision of herself being found dead in a hotel, accompanied by an auditory hallucination in which a loud voice informed her: "You are going to die here if you carry on like this." The incident jarred Carlisle into seeking sobriety, and she says she has been sober since 2005.

She told The Sydney Morning Herald in 2014: "I don't smoke anymore, I don't drink any more and I don't do drugs any more. I am very much into my Buddhism. I found turning 40 [in 1998] a real passage in time for me." Carlisle states in her autobiography Lips Unsealed: A Memoir (2010) that she has practiced Nichiren Buddhism as a member of the Soka Gakkai International since 2002, and she often mentions in press interviews that she chants Nam Myōhō Renge Kyō daily. She has also credited the practice with helping her maintain sobriety.

Activism

Carlisle supports LGBT rights, which she made public after her son came out to her at age fourteen in 2006.

In 2014, Carlisle co-founded Animal People Alliance, a nonprofit organization based in Calcutta, India, that raises funds and trains and employs impoverished women to care for street animals. "We are teaching people that animals have feelings," says Carlisle. "How to recognize a street animal in distress. There is a middle class developing and they still don't have proper vet care, so a lot of what we do will be educational. We're partnering with a hospital in Calcutta to teach about adoption and to get access to emergency rooms."

In May 2024, Carlisle was honored with the Harvey Milk Medal, presented to her by her son and by Stuart Milk, by the Harvey Milk Foundation for her gay rights advocacy. In June of that same year she was awarded with the 2024 YGB Namaste Award for her animal advocacy by the organization Yoga Gives Back.

Awards and nominations

Billboard Music Awards

Other awards

Discography

Studio albums

Belinda (1986)

Heaven on Earth (1987)

Runaway Horses (1989)

Live Your Life Be Free (1991)

Real (1993)

A Woman & a Man (1996)

Voila (2007)

Wilder Shores (2017)

Once Upon a Time in California (2025)

Extended plays

Kismet (2023)