Our Lips Are Sealed

It was the late 1970's and pop music was dreadful. It was boring, stale and going nowhere. Disco perked us up for awhile in the "Me Decade", (from about 1974-79), but as Disco faded in popularity, the only music left standing was boring, middle of the road pop. And to make matters worse, "radio programmers" came into their own during this period, remember "WKRP in Cincinnati"? And when your local FM station hired a "programmer", then all you heard was the most mainstream, vanilla hits, with absolutely no room for experimentation or pop music which pushed the envelope. It was like pop music by committee, and we all know that nothing new or original ever comes out of a committee. Pop music seemed like it might actually die from its own boredom.

But then, suddenly, everything changed. Punk music had been around since the early 1970's, but mostly underground or only heard in large urban centers, i.e. London, New York, etc. A few "glam rock" hits, offshoots of early punk, made the radio in the mid-70's, but it disappeared as quickly as it emerged. And then punk transformed, or mutated into something with a little more melody, and something a little "cleaned-up" for the masses, and "New Wave" emerged. New Wave music was first seen and heard by Americans on a new television network called "MTV", and the music, and the network, took off like a rocket. In the early 1980's, whenever a new band premiered on MTV, its songs quickly shot to the top of the U.S. music charts. It took American radio and record stores awhile to catch up with MTV, but they eventually did, and New Wave music set the style and trends which would dominate American pop culture for a decade.

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New Wave was coming primarily from England, and the number of English bands and songs which quickly found popularity in America was so vast, that their arrival was deemed "The Second British Invasion". (The first "British Invasion" having been the arrival of the Beatles in America in the 1960's).

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But the "punk/New Wave" American bands to emerge were numerous as well; Blondie, The Pretenders, The Cars, Talking Heads and The Knack all had huge hits during this period and most began long careers of mainstream success. And then, of course, also emerging was an all-girl band, The Go-Go's. The Go-Go's started out as a punk band in the L.A. punk scene of the late 70's, and after undergoing a few changes to their line-up, eventually toured England for most of 1980, where they honed their sound and found popularity. They signed with I.R.S. Records in 1981, releasing their first album, "Beauty and The Beat" in 1982, which eventually went to #1 on the BillBoard Album charts and remained there for six weeks. They became the first all-girl band in the U.S., who wrote their own songs and played their own instruments, to top the American charts. "Beauty and the Beat" went double-plantinum and spawned two hits, "Our Lips Are Sealed", (#20), and "We Got The Beat", (#2). The popularity of the Go-Go's burst open the door for American New Wave acts, and especially inspired a whole generation of girls who dreamed of not only singing, but also writing their own songs and playing their own instruments.
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.Unfortunately, The Go-Go's didn't last long. They only released two more albums, "Vacation" and "Talk Show", before drug use and infighting caused their break-up. They later reunited and released another album, and continue to tour sporadically to this day. During their heyday, The Go-Go's, Belinda Carlisle, Jane Wiedlin, Gina Schock, Kathy Valentine and Charlotte Caffey, were viewed as playful, innocent sprites, yet behind the scenes, they were heavy drug abusers and were somewhat infamous for indulging in antics with male groupies. At one point the group maintained a scrapbook of hundreds of polaroids of the penises of their male fans taken backstage after their shows. We're still waiting for that book to be published!
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Today is The Go-Go's lead singer Belinda Carlisle's 52nd birthday. Carlisle had a successful solo career after leaving The Go-Go's, even hitting #1 with the single, "Heaven Is A Place on Earth". Carlisle recently released her memoir, "Lips Unsealed", in which she admitted to a thirty year addiction to cocaine.
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Happy Birthday, Belinda, and thanks for the fantastic memories, and the great music!