I don’t know, but I am, and I’m not sorry!
I recently grabbed their third album, Talk Show, which I never got back on its original release in 1984. Sorry, Go-Go’s, I’m one of those people who helped contribute to the album’s relative unpopularity. I enjoyed the (hit) single “Head Over Heels” but for whatever reason the album as a whole didn’t appeal to me. I think the cover actually was a negative. Not only is it incredibly 80s (which offers a certain amount of kitsch value now), but it demonstrates a serious lack of imagination–unlike the album, which is actually their most sophisticated. Let’s compare covers:
- Beauty and the Beat: Not only is the title great all on its own, the cover features the band members pseudo-anonymously dressed in towels with beauty cream covering their faces. It’s fun and clever.
- Vacation: This one looks like a postcard from the 1950s, with retro typefaces and colors, and the band water skiing in formation in puffy pink and white outfits. Once again, it conveys a tremendous sense of fun.
- Talk Show: This one is simply the five members of the band all photographed straight-on, the photos cropped and lined up to span the cover. There’s a multicolor border. That’s it. Even leaving aside the fabulous 80s hair and fashions, this cover is just boring. It also turned out to be prescient, because it was the first cover to not actually have all the band members posing together, hinting at the split to come after the album was released. Also, I still don’t know what the asterisk after the words “talk show” refer to.
There’s only one more studio album to go, 2001’s God Bless The Go-Go’s, which is allegedly a fine but not outstanding addition to their sun-dappled oeuvre. This means I’ll soon probably put these albums aside for a while. For now, though, I got the beat.