For children of the '80s, pop music news doesn't get much cooler than this: Culture Club are reuniting with a new album and tour.
Boy George and his mates appeared on British television to discuss their decision to get back together, 30 years after the height of their popularity and nearly 15 years after their last reunion.
“We’ve been talking about it for a couple of years - it’s taken a while for us to get to the point where we all decided what we were going to do," George explained during an interview on the talk show Lorraine, as reported by The Mirror. “I wanted very much to make a new record, I didn’t just want it to be about the past, and I think everyone agrees that it was the right thing to do now.”
George said he and the boys finished their latest work - and first since their 1999 reunion album Don't Mind if I Do - in record time.
"We spent less than two weeks in Spain and recorded 19 tracks so we’re on fire at the moment... I think it was a bit of a risk getting back together actually, because it could have backfired, but it’s been amazing.”
Comprised of Boy George, drummer Jon Moss, and guitarists Mikey Craig and Roy Hay, Culture Club rode a wave of pop hits - "Do You Really Want To Hurt Me," "Time (Clock of the Heart)," Karma Chameleon," "Miss Me Blind" - to worldwide success starting in 1982. They sold more than 10 million copies of Colour By Numbers and captured the Grammy Award for Best New Artist.
Culture Club were as much a part of '80s pop culture as E.T., Pac-Man, and the Rubik's Cube, but personal problems caused them to flame out early, and the group to disband in the late '80s.
It turns out that George and Moss, whose brief but volatile love affair wrecked the group during its heyday, have finally made up for good.
"We’ve transcended our relationship, I think, through time," George noted. Moss added, “Most people should be friends with their ex-lovers. Unless something truly terrible has happened, you have to be friends eventually, otherwise it negates why you were together in the first place.”
For now, the tour appears to consist of U.K. dates only, but we can cross our fingers that the guys will cross the Atlantic and give their U.S. fans a nostalgia trip as well.
Hay noted, "George was a diva before he was famous – a diva in the clubs, a diva when we were in his squat writing our first song.” True to his legacy, Boy George is still very much the one in charge of the group, as he was quick to explain:
“I had a very clear vision, though they all felt I was being difficult. I just felt it was our last chance to do this and actually have fun doing it. For me Culture Club is like this room in my house that was in disarray, left unloved.
“In the spirit of getting my house in order it was the one room that needed love and attention. The way I finished the band wasn’t the way I wanted it to be. Romantic that I am, I thought there was a chance to do something soulful, from the heart.
“No one is offering money, we don’t have a record label – it had to be about us finding what we wanted to be. The last month has really done that.”
Keep checking AXS.com for more Culture Club news and upcoming tour dates.