Belinda Carlisle

She was named after her mother's Favorite film, Johnny Belinda (1948).

She is of English, Irish and Native American descent.

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, and recalled 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; she attended Colina Junior High School in Thousand Oaks, where she was a 3rd-string guard on the boys' basketball team, and later 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 at age 18.

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.

Belinda Jo Carlisle (born August 17, 1958) is an American singer and songwriter.

She gained fame as the lead vocalist of the Go-Go's, the most successful all-female rock band of all time, and went on to have a prolific career as a solo artist.

Belinda Jo Carlisle was born in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, on August 17, 1958 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.

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.

Raised in Southern California, Carlisle became the lead vocalist of the Go-Go's after the band's formation in 1978.

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 No. 1 album, Beauty and the Beat (1981), which featured the hits "We Got the Beat" and "Our Lips Are Sealed".

With their chart-topping debut studio album Beauty and the Beat in 1981, the group helped popularize new wave music in the United States.

The Go-Go's were the first (and to date only) all-female band in history who wrote their own songs and played their own instruments to achieve a No. 1 album.

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", and "Heaven Is a Place on Earth".

The Go-Go's reformed in 1999, and Carlisle performed with them until their disbandment in 2022, while also maintaining her solo career.

Carlisle's autobiography, Lips Unsealed, published in June 2010, was a New York Times Best Seller and received favorable reviews.

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.