NOTICE: To anyone that will not take what I’m about to say about Belinda Carlisle’s first solo record seriously, I invite you to look at your own music collection and remember how valid you think all of your own guilty pleasures are. We at RetroLowFi are not ashamed of any albums in our collection, (except for maybe Tori Amo’s To Venus And Back, Yes’s Big Generator and The Meat Puppet’s Golden Lies, which some of us only own for completists sake), and we couldn’t care less about ‘indie cred’. Said cred is not redeemable for anything of value, and besides… this album uses the same twelve notes that most popular American music is based around. It ain’t that far removed, so save your snickering and read.

I’ll admit without batting and eye that I’m a big fan of The Go-Go’s. I have all of their albums and a few bootlegs. I’ve seen them in concert without irony, and I’ll continue to check out any of their endeavors. They’re a great and valid pop band, and I dare you to find a reason why I should think otherwise. But if there has ever been a prime example of a group that equals more than the sum of it’s parts… they are it. I’ve gotten absolutely zero pleasure from most of their solo/side projects, and hell… I didn’t even enjoy my seeing my childhood crush Belinda Carlisle nude in Playboy. (Besides, didn’t all that airbrushing tickle her?). But one album stands apart from that mold… Belinda Carlisle’s Belinda.

Yeah, it’s cheesy. And the production is about as cringeworthy and dated as you’d imagine, but there’s a lot more going on here than an initial listen will offer.

In 1984, Belinda Carlisle had more drugs in her system than a collected pool of Pete Dougherty and Evan Dando’s urine. She looked bad, wasn’t singing very well, her band was in shambles…etc. If ever there were a case of ‘too much too soon’, Carlisle was the poster gal. After the inevitable Go-Go’s split, Belinda promised a solo record and resolved to get clean. But, let’s be realistic here. It’s not as if Belinda was harboring some skills that she hadn’t been allowed to share with the world in her former band. As a matter of fact, she was easily the least impressive Go-Go by a long-shot. She could kinda sing, danced just enough to qualify as a frontwoman, and… well, that’s about it. I mean, beyond her songwriting credits on Go-Go’s songs at that point, (which one can count on Mickey Mouse’s fingers), Belinda couldn’t even offer that she had something to say on a solo record. But something went horribly right in the recording process…

Producer Michael Lloyd assembled the most optimistic backing band I’ve ever heard in my life for the sessions. What they lacked in diversity and dynamics, they made up for with synths and beats straight out of every roller-rink in the country. One has to imagine that these session folks were picked long before anyone had even decided what songs would be going on the album, because most of these tunes center around heartbreak, frustration, distance, loneliness and flat-out ambivalence. One can imagine that these songs were phoned in to the session to reflect the mood and attitude of Carlisle at the moment. The disconnection of the subject matter from the musicians makes for one of the most asymmetrical pop records of the eighties. Considering that half of the tunes were supplied by fellow Go-Go Charlotte Caffey, I highly doubt this was by accident. Imagine the juxtaposition of Belinda’s effervescent and bubbly public image against her internal struggle to kick hard drugs, and… hell, you don’t even need to hear this album. Consider lyrics like:

“Today I woke up by myself / I hit the streets and wondered what I should do / I never noticed from the start / That I could feel alive again” from “I Feel The Magic”

“All the things I used to do / Don’t seem to mean much anymore / Every face and every place were lost along the way” from “From The Heart”

Yeah, not exactly rainbows and kittens farting glitter, is it? Hell, when the most optimistic and positive song on the record is a cover of Freda Payne’s heartbreaking “Band Of Gold”, this isn’t exactly the dance party album of the year, no matter what the hired hands in the backing band try to convince you of.

Belinda was promoted by a tour, some videos featuring Carlisle looking every bit as prissy as you remember, a #3 hit called “Mad About You” and then … nothing. Hell, the album has been in print roughly three times for less than a year apiece. Someone, somewhere really doesn’t want you to remember this album and I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s Belinda herself. C’mon, who wants to remember the year they kicked drugs and made a solo record that few gave a damn about? Heck, try to even find a tune from this album on any of her jillion ‘best of’ compilations, which are a joke in themselves. Carlisle has had roughly three sizeable hits in the US, and chooses to ignore one of them (i.e. “Mad About You) in favor of tripe from any number of unsuccessful comeback records? Way to be a historical revisionist.

Whatever.

I find this album alternately fascinating and heartwrenching. If you don’t have a sweet tooth for long-lost eighties pop, don’t bother buying that used copy on eBay for a dime. I like it, and there’s a good number of people that never forgot this release no matter how many times history has tried to paint over it’s existence.

As a side note: if I’ve gotten any of this information incorrect, then maybe the powers-that-be oughta offer a bit more biographical information than a turgid Wikipedia entry that offers a four sentence paragraph about this period in Belinda’s career, eh?