Belinda Jo Carlisle ( KAR-lyle; born August 17, 1958) is an American singer and songwriter. She gained fame as the lead vocalist of the Go-Go's, and she went on to have a prolific career as a solo artist.
Raised in Southern California, Carlisle was the lead vocalist of the Go-Go's, which she co-founded in 1978. With their chart-topping debut album Beauty and the Beat in 1981, the group helped popularize new wave music in the United States. The Go-Go's have sold over seven million records worldwide.
After the break-up of the Go-Go's in 1985, Carlisle went on to have a successful solo career with radio hits such as "Mad About You", "I Get Weak", "Circle in the Sand", "Leave a Light On", "Summer Rain", and "Heaven Is a Place on Earth". The Go-Go's reformed in 1999; Carlisle maintained her solo career and performed with the band until its disbandment in 2022, returning for two festival performances in 2025.
Carlisle's autobiography, Lips Unsealed, published in June 2010, was a New York Times Best Seller and received favorable reviews. In 1999, Carlisle was ranked number 76 with the Go-Go's in VH1's 100 Greatest Women of Rock & Roll. In 2011, Carlisle, as a member of the Go-Go's, received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. She and the band were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2021, and the California Hall of Fame in 2024.
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.
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.
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.