Sometime in this weekend between my brief free time from basketball, I got to watch the new documentary The Go-Gos (2020). As the title suggests, it’s about the girl band who helped to form the basis of new wave music in the 1980s. If you’re someone like me, you will have friends of your parents who played that music all the time when you visited. Whenever they would tour Southern California (which felt like often), they would be eager to get out there. Maybe it was my affection for those people, but it always made me fond of the genre, notably the work of groups like DEVO. They were that balance of Top 40 and just oddball enough to make even the outsider kids who couldn’t get on board with punk rock love you.
To be honest, the impact of The Go-Gos is way more fulfilling than the documentary. By the end, it falls so much on the side of conventions that any of their rambunctious behavior feels neutered. Which is a shame because for the first 40 or so minutes, I kind of fell in love with them. If I had more foresight to listen to new wave records in high school, there’s a good chance that this might be in my rotation. To put it simply, the buzz words of their origin are so appealing to me that I ask: how could I not love them?
They formed after the final Sex Pistols show. They toured England with Madness and The Specials. So many minor details appealed to my former punk rock sensibility. They were outsiders even within the genre, women who were trying to find their identity in music while having to deal with misogynist rhetoric. Considering that this documentary’s talking heads include Kathleen Hannah (Bikini Kill) of all people should show you how defiant and out there they once were. You wouldn’t expect it from the polished production of “We Got the Beat,” but even the story behind that song feels way more punk than the pop culture that adopted it.
For starters, a hilarious detail about The Go-Gos is that they realized they were writing pop songs. Given their affection for 50s girl groups (to which I say, which successful punk band of the era didn’t love Phil Spector records?), their structures owed some debt to them. However, they had to slow it down a few RPMs. Even then, none of them were conventional songwriters so their music cues were often esoteric or overlong. It’s a detail that’s hard to recognize in 2020, but it makes sense when you realize how long those intros sometimes get.
As much as I think that The Go-Gos doesn’t satisfy the latter half of their career, it’s a pretty great promotion for their music. It samples their pre-record contract days with a rawness and distortion that definitely sounds strange, but makes sense once you know that they’re the cute girls playing in dingy clubs, learning to strum a guitar and sing in harmony. Even from the depths of their rugged sound, you could hear greatness. Most punk bands would stop at those demo-sounding beginnings. The Go-Gos went further, and it’s amazing how much better they got as a result.
I will start by saying that “We Got the Beat” is one of those songs that has aged gracefully. As a song written while watching The Twilight Zone reruns, it’s amazing how much it makes the surreal images sound like a pep rally. It’s a song designed to get you excited, jump up and down, and believe that you have “the beat.” What is this proverbial “beat”? I can’t honestly answer that, but I hope it includes the bass line, which is a thing of beauty. I love how it rolls for a few measures before the guitar kicks in. Once the guitar comes in with the surfy chic, it builds to something reminiscent of pure unadulterated bliss.
It’s a song that never grows old. No matter who covers it, the lyrics are sure to get somebody on your side. Don’t believe me? I watched Disney+’s Stargirl (2020) and that cover by Grace VanderWaal is downright adorable. I don’t care if this is grating pixie nonsense played on a ukulele backed by a marching band. It. Just. Works.
That is the brilliance. Underneath the instrumentation is this fire of a band who clearly weren’t designing themselves after conventional pop. Their guitars were faster. It’s strange to say that while they were polished, they never quite had a clean sound. It was muted in a garage band way that was energetic, making them feel accessible. Once you realize that they once walked around Los Angeles in tutus during a music video shoot, you’ll realize how down to Earth these women are. They are all about being true to themselves, and it only makes me love them more.
The whole album is one quick blast of energy, finding ways to be as much Leslie Gore as they were The Buzzcocks. Even then, I have to say that their greatest gift to music was the three-way harmony. When you listen to “Tonite,” you are overwhelmed by three voices perfectly in tune with each other, overpowering the instruments in an old-fashioned doo-wop way. As the voices begin to fluctuate, pulling from the melody, it becomes this exciting sonic journey. It’s the type of vocal synchronicity that made them a success. They could break apart conventions and make them better. I have heard this style of singing by other bands, but rarely from a band that had winking misbehavior to their sound.
I’ll confess that my knowledge of turn-of-the-decade pop music is small. I personally assume that Giorgio Moroder came by and made synthesizers the new normal. Add in hair metal (a strong candidate for “worst popular music genre ever”), and I thought that the decade was a vapid wasteland. Then I hear “Beauty and the Beat” and I realize how wrong I am. It’s actually much more interesting than we give it credit for. Rock music was getting back to being ambitious in these small ways, and that included finally accepting The Go-Gos.
The story goes that when the band was trying to get a record contract, they were constantly being told that girl bands don’t sell. Nobody wants to hear their stories. It’s a familiar condescending from the patriarchy that makes their eventual success all the more rewarding. They were a scrappy band with the power to pull through. Even if one of them was consistently high on cocaine, they still had a clear focus on where they wanted to be. They didn’t want to settle for uncomfortable shows playing for Neo-Nazis who liked ska and hated women. They wanted to be embraced by a much, much nicer public.
They were so scrappy that their iconic album cover was done on the fly. The picture of them slathered in beauty products came about from a simple request: to make something simple and iconic. They sent someone to buy towels from Sears for the photoshoot. They were so strapped for cash that they returned the expensive towels sometime after. Cut to the near future and you’ll see that it was all for the best. Their album sold over two million copies and they defied expectations by becoming the first girl band to have a number one album.
And, in a moment of pointless bragging, it came out on my birthday.
On one hand, I honestly think that The Go-Gos’ sound is much more exciting than any of their non-hits on this album. At every turn, I find myself immediately entranced by the guitars kicking things off. Everything has a peppy vibe that anticipates you for something great. There is nothing wrong with Belinda Carlisle as a singer, but sometimes her lyrics aren’t the most interesting aspect of the song. It’s more how they use harmonies, blasting into the chorus with such an energy that you are subliminally excited.
I’m sad to say that otherwise, this album is fine. As an album that helped to influence the new wave genre, I think it’s fully ingenious and nonstop delightful. It makes you feel great by the end of every song. However, I can’t say that I’m all that focused on the lyrics and most of them have a familiarity that may be the result of the hundreds of bands I’ve heard imitate this sound since. I still love when the bass sneaks up on you, or the drums create this manic clapping.
But otherwise, I think that this is more of a mood record than a major triumph. I imagine going to see the band is more for them to extend the riffs for five minutes, having the microphone stick out over the crowd as they sing the chorus. They aren’t vapid. There’s definitely a small sense of rebellion in the type of subjects they cover. However, songs like “Fading Fast” isn’t always the most fulfilling the further into their personalized style that they get. You wish that all of them could be as timeless as “Our Lips Are Sealed,” but it’s still pretty good for a debut.
Personally, I put it into a camp alongside The Runaways’ debut album as these essential records not necessarily for the whole picture but what they symbolized at the time. They were examples of raw talent, of women finally allowed to sing songs in a style that wasn’t compromised. I imagine that it was more invigorating at the time. But hey, when The Runaways get to “Cherry Bomb,” you best believe that everyone is singing along with Cherie Curie. It’s about the energy of those notes, playing so fast that they may cease to make a sound. The Go-Gos found a way to elevate it into something more accessible, and when it works it works. It’s just that some of their songs are clearly filler.
Also, music is better for having these individuals in them. We need those wild voices dictating ways to make the genre more interesting. You may not believe it is given how clean and cute it all sounds, but The Go-Gos have this manic undertone that shines through in their perfectionist approach to pop. They were fun, willing to constantly perform self-effacing jokes that made you believe that even they weren’t sure how they got to be so famous.
With only four albums to their credit, it’s amazing how influential the band remains. Their story went the way of many giant groups before and after. It was the issues of addiction, songwriting credits, and the overall belief that one was better than the other. While it’s arguable that Carlisle was the real star, I can guarantee you that none of them would’ve been the same without each other. They all needed to work together to get that harmony, to fit that melody that was just off enough to become infectious and new.
If you look at their track record, it feels like they’re more likely to pull a hiatus than ever truly break up. That’s a relief because, honestly, their music is timeless. As much as it’s cribbing from other sounds, they brought it together and made something that is full of joy. Unlike those Sears towels, there’s no need to return “Beauty and the Beat” to your record store. It will sit on your shelf, waiting for you to need a brief respite. The way Carlisle’s voice cracks on “We Got the Beat” is perfection.
The Go-Gos is a story about a band finding their voice, and it achieves it through trial and error. When it gets to the heart of this partnership, you’ll feel like there’s no better band in the world. They’ve struggled to get where they are, and you respect them for not giving up. Even when they have fights, they know in their hearts that music comes first. This may not go down as my favorite record, but I’m not discrediting you if it’s yours. I frankly want to hear more from them now. They clearly have so much to say and I’m sure they’ve only got better at saying it now that they not only had the beat but the world as well waiting in anticipation.
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