Boy George

About Boy George

Boy George (born George Alan O'Dowd 14 June 1961 in Eltham, London) is a an English singer-songwriter and club DJ who was part of the English New Romantic movement which emerged in the early 1980s. He helped give androgyny an international stage with the success of Culture Club during the 1980s. His music is often classified as blue-eyed soul, which is influenced by rhythm and blues and reggae. His 1990s and 2000s-era solo music has glam influences such as David Bowie and Iggy Pop.

Boy George's androgynous style caught the attention of music executive Malcolm McLaren (of Sex Pistols fame), who arranged for O'Dowd to perform with the group Bow Wow Wow, featuring Annabella Lwin. Boy George's association with Bow Wow Wow ended soon afterwards, and he started his own group with bassist Mikey Craig. The group was to be called In Praise Of Lemmings, but the name was later abandoned. Jon Moss (who had drummed with The Damned, Adam and the Ants and London) then joined the group. The final member to join the band was Roy Hay. The group abandoned another name, Sex Gang Children, and settled on the name Culture Club, an in-joke about the ethnic composition of the group, which consisted of a transvestite Irish singer, a Jamaican-Briton on bass, a Jewish drummer, and an Anglo-Saxon Englishman on guitar.

The band signed with Virgin Records in the UK and with Epic Records in the US, and released its debut album Kissing To Be Clever in 1982. The album's third single, "Do You Really Want to Hurt Me?", reached #1 in sixteen countries and #2 in the United States. This single was followed by "Time (Clock Of The Heart)" (not on the UK LP), which reached the US #2, and "I'll Tumble 4 Ya", which reached #9. This gave Culture Club the distinction of being the first group since the Beatles to have three top 10 hits on the Billboard Hot 100 from a debut album. Their next album, Colour By Numbers was also a success.