The Go-Go’s are lauded, accurately, as the first group of women musicians to write their own songs and play their own instruments on a number one debut album. When they broke out onto the mainstream charts in 1981, that was a good hook for rock journos to hang a story on. But, it’s strikingly reductive. They were always bigger than that hook — bigger than their America’s Sweethearts image, and way, way bigger than anyone’s idea of how supposedly novel an all-female band is.
Outside of all of that, and from the start, The Go-Go’s were innovators who crafted their own unique sound. They wrote great songs and played them exceptionally well. In the end, that’s why we love them, and why on October 30, 2021, they were finally, at long last, inducted into the Rock n’ Roll Hall of Fame. To celebrate them, here are 20 great songs by the Go-Go’s that define them as a unique musical unit that helped set a template for bands who would come after them, many of those creatively driven by women.
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We Got the Beat
Released as an earlier, punkier standalone UK single on Stiff Records, The Go-Go’s re-recorded the Charlotte Caffey-penned “We Got the Beat” in a more pop vein on their 1981 debut Beauty and the Beat. It still retains its punk energy and hints at the roots of the band on the L.A punk scene. But it also hearkens back to the dance singles of the Sixties, too.
The song is built on a hooky bass riff, a Ventures-esque guitar solo, and a solid beat behind it all the way that helps to make this song a signature tune for them. “We Got the Beat” is a statement of intent, establishing their Sixties girl-group pop meets surf rock meets new wave sound that was a breath of fresh air on the radio just before the decade of the Eighties as it’s known today started in earnest.
Listen: We Got the Beat
Our Lips Are Sealed
Go-Go’s guitarist and songwriter Jane Wiedlin and The Specials’ Terry Hall co-wrote this song about the annoyances of the rumour mill surrounding their brief fling while on tour together in 1980. This Go-Go’s single is a carefree and sweet pop song despite its tense subject matter, featuring lead singer Belinda Carlisle’s confident vocal, with Wiedlin singing the hush now baby bridge.
Hall’s band Fun Boy Three would record their more brooding version in 1983, which proved to be a hit for them in Britain. Maybe the difference between sunny California versus the overcast English Midlands best explains the contrasts in tone better than differences in perspectives from the song’s co-writers. Silence still remains a pretty solid defence either way. Regardless, this song was still a hit in two different forms, easily proving its quality.
Listen: Our Lips Are Sealed
Can’t Stop the World
Bassist Kathy Valentine joined the Go-Go’s in 1980 to complete their classic lineup just before the group signed to Miles Copeland’s IRS records. With her, she brought this song that she wrote and recorded with her former band The Textones — a kind of life-affirmation meets a bird-flip. The Go-Go’s version is poppier than the Textones’ original. But it retains its defiant spirit and its effusive energy.
Belinda Carlisle knocks the lead vocal out of the park as usual and lead guitarist Charlotte Caffey’s break is stunning in its economy while still being incendiary. Valentine’s tight musical connection with drummer Gina Schock is an amazing standout on this cut, demonstrating how great a fit they are as a rhythm section right from the start.
Listen: Can’t Stop the World
Automatic
As their third single from Beauty and the Beat, Jane Wiedlin’s “Automatic” breaks the formula only a little, being a darker, less immediate, and more murkily post-punk effort than their previous two singles. “Automatic” demonstrates their versatility as a musical unit, creating a shadowy musical environment to suit the lyrics — spacious, noirish, and introspective.
Belinda Carlisle adjusts her phrasing into a more mechanical stop-start cadence to deliver the sparse and impressionistic lyrics. She and her bandmates create a darker sonic backdrop that’s all about mood and atmosphere. This is a song about abstract thoughts rather than romantic sentiment, which was pretty punk rock from a radio-friendly band like the Go-Go’s.
Listen: Automatic
Skidmarks on My Heart
This co-write between Belinda Carlisle and Charlotte Caffey is about a guy who loves his car more than his girlfriend — a classic slice of timeless rock mythology. The lyrics are full of humour (you say get a mechanic/I say get a shrink!) in a pop structure and melody that sounded vaguely retro at the time, like a lost hit from the Shangri-Las. Yet transcends its times, too.
“Skidmarks on My Heart” balances some familiar rock ’n’ roll subjects of cars, sex, and jealousy, and adds miles and miles of irony to that mix to make this tune irresistible. Gina Schock’s tumbling drum fills and Caffey’s twangy surf solo on this are exemplary, with Belinda’s vocal suggesting the rage of punk as tempered by the sweetness of pop — classic Go-Go’s.
Listen: Skidmarks on My Heart
Lust to Love
This is a deep cut that sounds like a smash hit. Woven together by Charlotte Caffey from three different song fragments and then matched to lyrics that Jane Wiedlin had, “Lust to Love” exemplifies their early DIY spirit and their precocious instincts as pop songwriters. It takes a common theme found all over pop history and makes it into something that still sounds fresh today.
Wiedlin’s scratchy rhythm guitar matches Belinda Carlisle’s appealingly torchy lead vocal. Everything is anchored by the tight Valentine-Schock rhythm section — the band’s secret weapon. Gina’s tom fills in the verses are especially effective as responses to the call of Belinda’s voice, going beyond timekeeping into the realm of deft melodic counterpoint that’s always in support of the song.
Listen: Lust to Love
This Town
Kicking off with Charlotte Caffey’s guitar figure that is somehow both surfy and menacing at the same time, this cut is about Los Angeles as viewed from the street level full of Sixties pop references and irony a-plenty, with a bar of 2/4 in the verses to make this one of their most rhythmically interesting cuts. This is another Caffey-Wiedlin composition with invitations to be one of us matched with images of discarded stars like worn out cars, and with the line between dreamers and whores being one that’s razor thin.
For a split second, we take the line this town … so glamourous at face value just because Belinda is singing it. But this song is about a landscape that’s littered with broken dreams as much as with those few with a chance to come true. That’s a sobering perspective from two writers in their twenties who had experienced everything sung about in this song up close.
Listen: This Town
Vacation
The title track for their follow-up record to their debut in July of 1982 is adapted from another Textones song Kathy wrote, with additional input from Jane and Charlotte. “Vacation” is an enduring summer anthem today as much as it was then, taking a couple of listens before revealing the bluer emotional layers underneath it.
It was put out as The Go-Go’s were thrust headlong into the star-maker machinery of early-Eighties pop, well on their way to being America’s Sweethearts in the earliest era of MTV. A tour with The Police and a pivotal SNL appearance were behind them, taking them from clubs and onto stadium shows in short order. The five smiling women having a ball on the cover of Rolling Stone in August 1982 were still under a lot of pressure to continue to deliver the goods.
Listen: Vacation
Girl of a 100 Lists
A Jane Wiedlin composition, this song is seemingly a literal list of errands, favourite things, and temporary flings reflective of its writer. Yet in the middle of a whirlwind rock star life, it likely also served as a reminder of normal life to keep her grounded during what must have been a period of unreality for her and her bandmates.
The chord progression is unconventional (E, A, D … F#), suggesting the unpredictable amid a daily routine. It’s not always obvious how the melody will bring it all back home. Yet it does — seamlessly. That musical friction creates a compelling narrative even without the lyrics. Gina’s energetic drumming is a highlight as she holds down the pulse on the ride during the chorus, while Jane’s rhythm guitar and Kathy’s bass grind and growl underneath it.
Listen: Girl of 100 Lists
Get Up and Go
Sounding like a get in your car and ride style song, this Wiedlin-Caffey tune is a break-up song that contrasts its musical exuberance. The Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! intro alone is a pure and joyously youthful exhortation to match their audiences’ own. The muscular drums and bass intro, Charlotte’s simple but hooky guitar riff, and Belinda’s pop voice all make this entirely rewarding as an anthemic road trip tune.
But the get up and go here isn’t about moving ahead toward an exciting future. It’s about telling someone to get out of your face. That double-meaning provides a double-take. Music clashing with the lyrics is a classic post-punk gambit that The Go-Go’s employ extremely well here, placed here inside a pure sugar rush of a pop song.
Listen: Get Up and Go
Beatnik Beach
In the middle of the coke-fueled and cynical Eighties, “Beatnik Beach” is a call to a world long gone even by then; an early-Sixties landscape of lip-synched pop television, beach movies, and ersatz mainstream interpretations of counterculture. Much like their “Skidmarks on My Heart”, Belinda Carlisle’s and Charlotte Caffey’s tune is heavy on the irony and humour, with groovies, keens, bosses, and neats all over the place with a wink and a smirk.
Gina Schock’s drums are pure surf rock, which provides a foundation for the whole arrangement, solidified by Caffey’s Dick Dale-style lead guitar riding the wave. This is pure fun as a call to The Go-Go’s’ childhoods as Sixties kids, cut during a time when they were growing up fast in a cut-throat music industry with no time for innocence.
Listen: Beatnik Beach
Speeding
Featured as a B-side to the “Get Up and Go” single from Vacation, this one really is about getting in your car and taking off. It was also featured on the 1982 Fast Times at Ridgemont High soundtrack, which looking back is a truly odd mix of new and decidedly old wave! This song fits just fine as a quintessentially Californian cut in the well-established pop song tradition of car songs that equate the push of a gas pedal to the freedom of youth.
This version of “Speeding” is a reworking of an early song of theirs left over from their punkier days, pre-classic line up. In its new form, it still contains that same energy, although with a kind of early-Beatles feel to it all at once, which is another call to their past as they hurtled into their future.
Listen: Speeding
Head Over Heels
The Go-Go’s rushed ahead through the pressures of touring and recording, doubling down on their chemical excesses while doing so. Once again, “Head Over Heels” as lead single on 1984’s Talk Show is a key example of a pop-sugar rush with a double meaning outside of the usual context of being in love as both the music and that term might suggest.
Belinda’s voice sells this as a sparkling jewel of a pop song while Kathy’s bass interlocks with Gina’s drums in the break, sending tingles of excitement up the spine. Charlotte’s vibrant rock ’n’ roll piano that sings with joy here on her co-write with Kathy Valentine that’s all about feeling completely lost and dragged down beyond one’s control. A huge hit for them, its pure pop sheen belied the pain at its heart, hiding in plain sight.
Listen: Head Over Heels
Turn to You
Near the end of their classic period when drugs and in-fighting began to eat away at their union, The Go-Go’s could still deliver an anthemic pop song made for radio. This one from Wiedlin-Caffey is a classic relationship dissolution tale of dependency and desperation.
Belinda’s sings it with confidence and grit, and with a hint of desperation aligned to the emotional intent of the lyrics. It’s pushed along by call-and-response dynamics with Jane and Kathy’s backing voices with Belinda’s lead, and Wiedlin’s and Caffey’s guitars interlocking as if they’re one instrument. On this song, and others on the Talk Show record overall, they were levelling up as musicians even as The Go-Go’s as a project was beginning to grind them down. Oh, and that is (literally) Rob Lowe in the music video!
Listen: Turn to You
Yes or No
By 1983, Jane Wiedlin stepped outside of the Go-Go’s camp to collaborate with Sparks on their song “Cool Places”, which was a hit for them. During their collaboration, they wrote this song about deciding whether or not to go ahead with a love affair.
Belinda takes this tune and runs with it, revealing new resonance and maturity in her delivery, hinting at what she would do in a successful solo career later in the decade. Meanwhile, Jane also had interests outside of the band, musical and otherwise. In this the yes or no takes on a whole new meaning — continue as before, or move on to something new? This song was the last single released during their initial recording era, which perhaps gives away the answer.
Listen: Yes or No
Mercenary
A B-side to the “Yes or No” single, this cut shows off The Go-Go’s evolving range, with Gina’s military snare being a standout along with Belinda’s impassioned vocal. Also, there’s something of a folk-rock flavour on this tune as it rings with 12-string acoustic guitar to go along with their familiar new wave jangle and crunch, showing another side of the band, even while they still retain their identity.
“Mercenary” is one of those songs that hints at a direction they might have followed later in the decade, closing off the Talk Show record on a sombre note. In retrospect, it seems like a bittersweet goodbye that is more the former than the latter. By October of 1984, founding member Jane would leave the band. After carrying on without her as a live act, they dissolved by the spring of 1985.
Listen: Mercenary
The Whole World Lost Its Head
The Go-Go’s pursued solo projects for the rest of the decade. By the early Nineties, they’d reunite for live shows in their classic line-up, aware of how special they are as a unique musical unit. In 1994, they released the comprehensive compilation album Return to the Valley of the Go-Go’s which included this new song.
“The Whole World Lost Its Head” captures the spirit of the band as they were, while also updating their sound in time for a punk-pop revival that they helped to inspire. It returns the band to their punk roots pretty handily at a breckneck speed with this Valentine-Wiedlin co-write on which Belinda easily finds the growl in her voice after a successful career in pure pop. The surf sound is here too along with the punky grind that made us love The Go-Go’s from the start.
Listen: The Whole World Lost its Head
Talking Myself Down
After occasional live shows together for the rest of the Nineties, The Go-Go’s put out their long-awaited fourth record, God Bless the Go-Go’s in 2001. On it, they double down on the punk rock side of their musical personalities, exemplified by the single “Unforgiven”, written with Green Day’s Billie Joe Armstrong. Charlotte Caffey and Jane Wiedlin wrote “Talking Myself Down with The Bangles’ Susannah Hoffs, hooking into their Sixties pop side a bit more.
Featuring a psychedelic broken piano introduction, “Talking Myself Down” is a storming deep cut that gets a listener’s attention straight away. This tune’s lyrics reflect a more seasoned perspective as a kind of thematic successor to “Head Over Heels”, rooted in hard won experience with struggles, vices, and baggage now behind them, but always lurking in the background, too.
Listen: Talking Myself Down
Daisy Chain
By 2001, The Go-Go’s had the time and perspective to reflect on their story as a band, and as friends. “Daisy Chain” is a clear statement about all of that from their 1978 beginnings as punk rock kids to the burnout of stardom at their height. Kathy Valentine and Jane Wiedlin wrote this with singer-songwriter Jill Sobule, this time including a 1967-style mellotron that makes one wonder what a full album of flower-power Go-Go’s tunes might sound like!
Otherwise, in relating their history in this song so boldly, “Daisy Chain” is a lament that turns into a redemptive tale just by recording it together as friends and bandmates. This song finds them reunited with greater perspective than was possible for them as young women in the centre of a hurricane together as they’d been.
Listen: Daisy Chain
Club Zero
The Go-Go’s went on to tour multiple times throughout the 21st century, losing a member, gaining her back, and continuing to celebrate their unique sound as a live band. It took some time for them to lay down something new; 19 years, in fact. This single was the immensely satisfying result after such a long wait.
“Club Zero” is about moving ahead in a challenging new era for all of us, with no fucks given. Pure punk rock. Released nearly forty years after the initial release of “We Got the Beat” and written remotely, they put out this new single as a companion to filmmaker Allison Ellwood’s excellent documentary The Go-Go’s — and it sounds just like them. After all they’ve been through and with much healing between them done, The Go-Go’s are still the Go-Go’s.
Listen: Club Zero
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Runners up and bubbling under:
- Fading Fast
- Tonite
- How Much More
- You Can’t Walk in Your Sleep (If You Can’t Sleep)
- He’s So Strange
- Worlds Away
- It’s Everything but Party Time
- We Don’t Get Along
- This Old Feeling
- I Think it’s Me
- Capture the Light
- Forget That Day
- Beneath the Blue Sky
- I’m the Only One
- Beautiful
- Unforgiven
- Apology
- La La Land
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Getting past that reductive all-female hook that is so often attached to the Go-Go’s is easy when one reviews just how many great songs they wrote and recorded together — songs that no one else could have created other than those five people together. Like the best bands, they are the result of a mysterious chemical reaction that cannot be explained, probably not even by them.
The word timeless is hackneyed by now. But if it wasn’t, that would be the appropriate term for The Go-Go’s. Their music doesn’t sound like Eighties music. By adding California surf music to Sixties pop and Buzzcocks-style punk, they made something that is uniquely their own, transcending the era out of which it came. Pop music as we understand it today owes The Go-Go’s a debt, far beyond gender, genre, style, or age.
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Learn about The Go-Go’s at gogos.com
For more background on the band’s history in their early years and up through the release of Beauty and the Beat, check out Vogue’s oral history of the Go-Go’s.
