What Belinda Carlisle really thinks about her former rival, Madonna

After having an intense rivalry in the 80s, pop star Belinda Carlisle has set the record straight on where things stand between her and Madonna.

“Fun. Too much fun.” That’s how Belinda Carlisle sums up her relationship with Australia since she first visited in the early ’80s, when she was leading all-female rock band The Go-Go’s to musical infamy. There’s more: “I love the light. I love the beach.” It reminds her,

she says, of the “old California” – the Los Angeles of her teenage years, when she was both a cheerleader and an acid-dropping rebel – that no longer exists, and where she hasn’t lived in nearly three decades.

But there’s one particular aspect of this country that sticks with the 64-year-old singer most.

“My audience there is loyal; [they’re] for the long haul. They’re rabid. And I love the choreography you all do to ‘Summer Rain’. It’s the only place I’ve seen it. I’ve got to learn it.”

Belinda Carlisle: ‘I’m able to see the miracle in everything.’ Picture: Scott Dudelson/Getty Images

The local love for that 1990 single, which found its greatest chart success here, is but one aspect that brings her back (she’ll be here for another tour – twice-delayed due to the pandemic – in spring). Wanderlust is no doubt another.

Carlisle is calling Stellar from Mexico City, which she and her husband Morgan Mason made their home after frantically picking up and leaving Thailand nearly two years ago, when Covid was wreaking havoc.

“We were like trapped rats,” she says. “We had to leave without all of our stuff. We went to LA first and my goddaughter said, ‘You’re crazy. Go to Mexico City.’

It had always been on the cards. So we arrived at night-time, it was raining, and I thought … what the heck have you done? Then I woke up to the most gorgeous city – and I absolutely love it.”

The clarity through which Carlisle now sees the world is, of course, a direct result of the sobriety she has maintained since 2005, when she decided it was time to kick decades of drug and alcohol abuse.

“With each passing year,” she reveals, “it means freedom. I’m able to see the miracle in everything.”

Last month, Carlisle also celebrated 37 years of marriage to Mason, which she calls a feat. “You have to work at it … [but] thank God we hung in there.”

Belinda Carlisle: ‘To be able to have a catalogue that’s still played on the radio says something for the quality of the songs.’ Picture: @travels_with_mrs_mason via Instagram

A week after going sober, Carlisle recalls, “I was very fragile, standing at Harrods in London. And all of a sudden, I had this thought: Oh my God, I’ve caused him so much pain and I don’t know how to deal with it. So I called him and asked, why? And he said, ‘I always saw the real you, who you were underneath that facade.’ I think that’s what kept him there. But I don’t know that he’d still be there if I’d kept going.”

The legacy of The Go-Go’s looms large wherever Carlisle goes, though the formidable solo career she forged after their initial break-up stands on par. Her most popular songs are so ubiquitous that it’s hard to avoid hearing them – but what is that like for the person who sings them?

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Lead singer of American all female band the Go-Go’s, Belinda Carlisle. Picture: Anthony Barboza/Getty Images

“Weird at first,” she admits. “I walk into [the supermarket] or the doctor’s office and, boom, it starts – ‘We’ve Got The Beat’ or whatever. Now, it’s not strange. It’s like, wow, this is very cool. To be able to have a catalogue that’s still played on the radio says something for the quality of the songs.”

As to the attendant nostalgia for the decade when she (first) ruled the airwaves, Stellar asks if she can name anything about that period that wasn’t so great in hindsight.

“I can’t think of any downside to the ’80s, aside from it being a decade of excess,” Carlisle replies.

“And the fashion was pretty bad. I guess they got that wrong. But there was an innocence about it that we don’t really have today. I miss the ’80s. I miss the ’70s more. But you know, I’m loving right now.”

Her biggest hit, 1987’s ‘Heaven Is A Place On Earth’, found rebirth thanks to a 2016 episode of Black Mirror, but it also made a cameo in the 1991 documentary In Bed With Madonna.

In one scene, back-up singers Niki Haris and Donna De Lory playfully taunt Madonna by singing Carlisle’s hit off-camera (and off-key) as she’s getting her make-up done.

“Do I have to listen to this?” she asks with a sneer, as she rolls her eyes.

Carlisle tells Stellar that while she now finds the moment “funny”, at the time she was frustrated with De Lory, who after working with Carlisle for years then abandoned her to tour with Madonna.

“I was like, are you f*cking kidding? I was kind of disappointed. I don’t care what Madonna does, but I ran into Donna right after and blanked her. But we’ve [patched] things up; we’ve worked together over the past 10 years.”

As for the criticisms Madonna now cops over her appearance, Carlisle comes to her defence: “I respect what she’s doing. She’s brave putting herself out there like that. I don’t think I could ever do it. There are elements of ageism and sexism; I get that … not as bad as her. They’ll either say, ‘Oh, she’s a hag’ or ‘Oh my God, look at all the work she’s had done.’ No-one says that about guys, you know.”

Carlisle has never stopped making music – she’s released albums of French chansons and Sikh chants – but her last foray into new pop songs in English was back in 1997.

Belinda Carlisle feature’s in this Sunday’s Stellar. Picture: Danieel Nadel for Stellar

That will change this week with the release of her new EP Kismet, which recalls her signature power-pop sound and came about thanks to a chance coffee-shop encounter her son James had with acclaimed songwriter Diane Warren (who wrote Carlisle’s 1987 hit ‘I Get Weak’ as well as songs for everyone from Cher and Céline Dion to Beyoncé and Lady Gaga).

“They FaceTimed me and [Diane] said, ‘Get down to the studio. I have some hits for you.’ And I thought, oh God, I don’t know if I want to do this. What if I have to say I don’t like them? I went to the studio as a courtesy, to be honest. Then I heard the songs and freaked out and thought it would be stupid not to say yes.

So here I am, talking to you now after a lot of coincidences and chance meetings. That’s why it’s called Kismet. I’m obviously not meant to retire right now.”

Kismet is released this Friday.

Originally published as What Belinda Carlisle really thinks about her former rival, Madonna