Artist – Album: The Go-Go’s – Beauty and the Beat
Released: 24th
July 1981
Sounds Like: Girl power (pop)
Sometimes I love this blog. I didn’t really know The Go-Go’s
before today, but now I think that they’re just brilliant.
For some reason
(i.e. because I only knew ‘Heaven is a
Place On Earth), I always thought that Belinda Carlisle was just like
Barbara Streisand – huge in the eighties but since revealed to be a purveyor of
cloyingly poppy schmaltz. Jane Wiedlin, on the other hand, was the author of
one of my guiltiest pleasures: the power pop ‘Rush Hour’, which I must apologise to numerous long-suffering neighbours
for singing to as loud as possible when intoxicated. Together, and teamed with
three other female rockers, I had assumed they were just another girl group,
like those around when I grew up: The Spice Girls, Atomic Kitten and the Corrs
(OK, so there was a guy in that one, but he was definitely there to be heard
and not seen).
Nope, The Go-Go’s are much, much better than that. The album
starts with the vital single ‘Our Lips
Are Sealed’, full of infectious melodies and poppy harmonies. ‘How Much More’ is classic New Wave,
giddy and shuffling and thinly veiling its heartbroken lyrical content. ‘We Got the Beat’ was the other single,
containing dirty, grinding verses and a sugary sweet chorus, that sounded somewhere
between The B-52’s kitschness and The Tom Tom Club’s modernity.
It’s not just one of the best albums by an all female group.
It’s not just one of the best albums of the new wave, post-punk era. It’s up
there with the best of all time, full stop.
Albumaday... rating:
8/10
1. Our
Lips Are Sealed – 2:45
2. How
Much More – 3:06
3. Tonite
– 3:35
4. Lust
to Love – 4:04
5. This
Town – 3:20
6. We
Got the Beat – 2:36
7. Fading
Fast – 3:41
8. Automatic
– 3:07
9. You
Can’t Walk in Your Sleep (If You Can’t Sleep) – 2:54
10. Skidmarks
on My Heart – 3:06
11. Can’t
Stop the World – 3:20
Listen to ‘How Much
More’: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cvIj6bGPTRs
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