The Go-Go's

The Go-Go's first album is a great selection of sugary pop songs with traces of the lighter moments of punk, surf and bubblegum hooks. It's fun, harmless beat pop with the best songs being the well-known "We Got The Beat" and "Our Lips Are Sealed."

Contrary to their name, gender, packaging and producers (Richard "My Boyfriend's Back"
Gottehrer and Rob Freeman), the Go-Go's are by no means an Eighties revival of the old girl
groups. Just as well – things have changed. In the Sixties heyday of the Angels, the
Chantels, the Ronettes, et al., a pop girl's only options were to get a boy or yearn for one.
There seemed to be no other social contact, just a terrifying aloneness, until so... More >

Unlike so many groups who live and die by the hook, this one's got hooks, and when you pay attention to the lyrics it seems possible that they don't live and die by the hook at all--"Tonite" and "Skidmarks on My Heart," to choose but two unprepossessing examples, work subtle twists on teen fatalism and obsession, respectively. When you don't pay attention to the lyrics, which isn't hard, you begin to think they live and die by the hook after all. And you're probably right. (Grade - B+)