BELINDA CARLISLE Vinyl & CDs

Review: A surprise addition to the series of Belinda Carlisle reissues mainly slated for 2023 comes this 2024 top-up edition of Real, complementing the already-out Demon Records versions of Heaven On Earth and Runaway Horses. Real is Carlisle's fifth studio album, for which a decided wardrobe reshuffle captures the mood; famously, the singer swapped her prior glamorous look for a jeans and tee shirt drip, coinciding with the ironic theme of authenticity which recurs throughout the album. Famed for its badboy biker-loving ballad 'Big Scary Animal', on which Carlisle confronts the id through coming face-to-face with 'feelings hid', and 'Lay Down Your Arms', on which a wild-western theme is subverted to provoke the sense of a lawless relationship triangle up for grabs.

Review: Released in 1993 and now reissued via its original label Demon, Belinda Carlisle's fifth solo album was notable for its standout singles 'Big Scary Animal' and 'Lay Down Your Arms', both of which showed off her raunchy, large, all-American style. At this stage in her career, we witnessed Carlisle deliberate on her femininity; re-form her agency under patriarchy; and subvert classic Westernized images of opulence, romance and wealth; all while keeping things instrumental energized and hey-ho. Now, once more, you can reexperience Carlisle's return to authentic source, with Real.

Review: Belinda Carlisle undertook a huge world tour back in 2022 and 2023 and in the wake of that she has now dropped the second volume in a series of media book sets of her recordings. This instalment of Decades takes in all of the tracks off her four albums Real from 1993, A Woman And A Man from 1996, Voila from 2007 and Wilder Shores from 2017. As such there are plenty of her well known hits here from 'Big Scary Animal' to 'Lay Down Your Arms' to 'Always Breaking My Heart' as well as some covers of some well and lesser known French songs.

Review: From The Go-Gos through to her blockbuster solo career, Belinda Carlisle had a busy time of it in the 1980s. In the wake of her huge success with 1987's Heaven On Earth she returned two years later with Runaway Horses, and continued to charm the world with her stadium-sized brand of uplifting drive time pop. The biggest hit from the record is surely 'We Dream The Same Dream', but the likes of 'Leave A Light On' and 'La Luna' are also classics in the Carlisle canon. Now the album has been half-speed remastered, and comes in a tidy reissue format with a booklet and an obi-strip - a collector's edition if ever we saw one.