Leave a Light On – Belinda Carlisle – 1989

I am not embarrassed to say that Belinda Carlisle was my first musical infatuation. It’s a childhood crush that goes back even earlier than this track, but at that time I didn’t know what I was feeling. When Leave a Light On was released in 1989, my hormone-heavy thirteen year old self suddenly realised what was happening.

Belinda Carlisle certainly didn’t have the greatest, the smoothest, or the strongest vocals. In fact her rough around the edges style was probably far more suited to her tenure as the lead singer of punk rock outfit The Go-Gos, than it was to the mainstream pop sound that she cultivated in the late eighties and early nineties, but it was a move that saw her become one of the most popular and successful female artists of the time.

I alway liked the authenticity of her voice, even though I was a little less impressed once I found out that her throaty and sensuous sound was at least partly as a result of her long-standing cocaine habit from her partying days in the early part of her career.

Sometimes it’s more romantic not to know the truth!