Belinda Carlisle has a personal statement that reflects her identity as an artist. “I was born a contrarian,” she tells American Songwriter of how she’s made a habit out of going against the grain, a consistent theme throughout her career.
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Born in Hollywood and raised in nearby Burbank and Thousand Oaks during the 1970s, Carlisle is a California girl at heart. She proudly displays her adoration for her home state on her 2025 album, Once Upon a Time in California, covering 10 of her favorite songs from her youth. “I had fantasies growing up about being a singer,” she recalls, confessing that the first time she heard her voice, she thought it sounded “awful” and started taking vocal lessons to hone her craft. Her early musical influences range from The Beach Boys and The Beatles to Phil Spector, all of whom she listened to on the radio.
“When I was growing up, I lived for California radio,” she says. “For me, it was everything. It was an escape.” She and her friends even formed a Beatles club on their street (“We used to pledge allegiance to the Beatles every day,” she laughs). “Living in California at that time, music was a big part of the culture. Ever since I was really young, I loved music.”
She cites The Beach Boys and their “melodic pop and intricate harmonies” as the band that means the most to her, while also appreciating the Philadelphia sound. These vast musical influences were set against a backdrop of old California ranches, rolling green hills, and oak trees. “It was an easy place to live. There was an innocence. Music was a big part of the culture at the time,” she says of California in the ‘70s, reflecting on how she returned to Thousand Oaks to do a show in 2022 and how the stark changes impacted her. “I got really emotional because it had retained that romance of what California was, which really doesn’t exist a lot anywhere anymore.”
Her vast musical repertoire expanded when she fell in love with punk rock in high school and was introduced to the genre by bands such as the Sex Pistols and The Clash. “It was raw and shocking when it came out. It was rebellious and taboo and everything that I love,” she raves of punk. “It was just the most exciting music.”
Carlisle added her own flavor to the genre as lead singer of The Go-Go’s, an all-female rock band she co-founded in Los Angeles in 1978. Their 1981 debut studio album, Beauty and the Beat, launched them into stardom with signature hits “Our Lips Are Sealed” and “We Got The Beat” while making Carlisle a distinguishable voice in the world of rock music.
The title track of their 1982 sophomore album Vacation also proved to be a hit, cracking the Top 10 on the Billboard Hot 100. As the band was racing up the charts, Carlisle was also honing her voice as a songwriter. She co-wrote one of the band’s early tracks, “Overrun,” which she describes as an “angry political song” that was “about taking over the world,” as evidenced by such lyrics as, We want to overrun the city, the state, the world. She also wrote “Skidmarks on My Heart” on Beauty and the Beat about her brother and co-wrote “Beatnik Beach” off Vacation.
“I wasn’t musically trained. I have a good ear and being able to come up with melodies in my head,” she explains of her writing process. “I stuck to lyrics. Most of my contributions to my music has been lyrics. I don’t really consider myself primarily a songwriter, but mostly a singer. I’m a singer who’s dabbled in songwriting.”
Following their 1984 album, Talk Show, the group disbanded in 1985, with occasional reunions taking place throughout the years. The band was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2021.
“Everybody had the same attitude and we were determined to be a success one day,” she recalls of her time with The Go-Go’s. “I’m really proud of the achievements against all odds. We had no idea how to do anything, but we learned as we went along. If it wasn’t for The Go-Go’s, I’m not sure that I would have had a career as a solo artist. They’re still a huge part of me.”
Following her departure from the band, Carlisle went on to build a successful solo career, beginning with her 1986 self-titled debut, which spawned the hit single, “Mad About You.” She built upon this success with her second solo album, Heaven on Earth, in 1987, which saw the release of her signature hit, “Heaven Is a Place on Earth.”
“I think the demise of the band taught me a lot with my solo career. It was an extraordinary experience,” she says.
Following the release of her sixth solo album, A Woman & A Man, in 1996, Carlisle was dropped from her record label and reached a turning point in her career. “I don’t know whether I want to do this anymore. I don’t know who I am, what I am,” she recalls thinking at the time. “That began the most interesting part of my life.”
In 1994, Carlisle and her husband, Morgan Mason, relocated to France, where they resided for over 20 years. It’s where the superstar tapped into a new element of her voice and recorded the 2007 album, Voila, a compilation of French pop standards that she sings entirely in French.
“We just had this dream about living there,” she says of the move. “With the French album, that was the first time I could be as creative and as out there as I wanted. I thought, ‘I’m never going to work any other way.’ So anything I ever do or put out, it comes from the heart.”
That latter statement rings true for her new project, Once Upon a Time in California. The concept of the album originated from her Saturday Serenades series, which she launched during the pandemic in 2020. “I really didn’t know if I’d ever be able to set foot on the stage again or whether live music would ever happen, so I thought, ‘I’ll take my favorite songs that I love and do a serenade every Saturday,” Carlisle describes of the series concept.
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But the idea for a covers album started formulating years earlier. In 2017, she started compiling a list of songs and playing with them in the studio. Carlisle was living in Bangkok at the time and was commuting to Los Angeles to start working on the album in 2021. She worked closely with producer Gabe Lopez to curate a track list that memorialized her childhood while still honoring her voice. The result is her take on 10 of her favorite songs she listened to growing up, ranging from Dionne Warwick’s “Anyone Who Had a Heart” to Harry Nilsson’s “Everybody’s Talking.”
“In the beginning, it was like, ‘What is this?’ because we had this set of songs, but it didn’t mean they were going to work. We had to demo them and listen and play with the arrangements,” she says of the process. “There were a lot of songs that didn’t work, but I’m really happy with the songs that did work, and they bring back memories of little things in my childhood.”
Among the memories of her childhood that the album evokes are dressing up and miming as she sang into a fake microphone in the garage of her Burbank home or riding her bicycle through the fields of her Thousand Oaks neighborhood and listening to Nilsson.
“They’re songs that meant a lot to me, that I loved melodically and the lyrics to, and that I felt like I connected to as a child. It was very organic.” She selected “The Air That I Breathe” by The Hollies as the lead single, noting how it reminds her of going to her friend Nancy’s house as a child and playing it on repeat on the record player, with Carlisle describing the song as a contradiction of “romantic” and “weird.”
“It’s slightly off to me, which I love,” she says of the “very sad” yet “real good” song. “I think this is for the fans and people around my age who remember these songs and how beautifully written they are. I think that people have a tendency to write off pop music, but there are certain pop songs that have really endured, and it’s an art form,” she says of what she hopes fans take away from the album. “Hopefully people will like it and they’ll remember, ‘Those songs were so great.’”
In the meantime, she and her husband continue to travel the world and are now based in Mexico City. Her main goal right now is to become fluent in Spanish within two years (she’s currently taking lessons three times a week).
“I’m totally a gypsy,” she says. “I love being an expat. I probably will be an expat for the rest of my life.” The singer says she’s not sure what her next career steps are after Once Upon a Time in California releases on August 29, and is letting inspiration strike when it’s time.
“I just do what I feel like doing, which is a great way to work,” she says. “That’s what I learned from my French album. I only do what I love and what’s fun, and I think that people can hear that in the music when I sing. There’s never been a grand design. I work from the heart.”
Photos by Albert Sanchez
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