Culture Club Kissing Cleaver

The success of "The Crying Game" marked a comeback for Boy George, especially in the U.S., where his solo career had never taken hold beyond the dance clubs, and SBK (distributor of his label, Virgin) took advantage of his resurgence by compiling this 75-minute, 19-track album, which combines his former group Culture Club's biggest hits with selections from his solo work. The ten Culture Club tracks are of a piece, from 1982's "Do You Really Want to Hurt Me" (which here leads off with an ominous voice intoning, "Popularity breeds contempt") to "Love Is Love," which wasn't a hit but is a better choice than the missing "War Song," which was. The solo tracks are a more mixed batch, and not only because Top 40 U.K. hits like "Keep Me in Mind," "Sold," and "To Be Reborn" are missing. They often rely on loud percussion tracks that strand Boy George's tender tenor somewhere in the distance. He remains most effective on rhythmic ballads, whether "Do You Really Want to Hurt Me," "Everything I Own" (his chart-topping first U.K. solo hit), or "The Crying Game".

The Best of Culture Club is a greatest hits album of British new wave group Culture Club, released by Virgin Records in 1989. The album was Culture Club's second greatest hits compilation. It originally included 16 tracks: 13 singles, 2 songs previously not available on any Culture Club album, and a non-single track. In 1999 and 2004, Virgin and EMI Gold, respectively, released the album with different artworks, retaining the original track listing. The compilation reached number 4 in French Compilations Chart in 1992. In 2005, the compilation was certified Silver in the UK.

There have been a number of Boy George/Culture Club greatest hits collections, but none of them manages to offer a truly complete picture of the band that produced so many likable, hummable songs. In no particular order, "Storytellers/Greatest Moments" rounds up the usual suspects ("Do You Really Want to Hurt Me," "Karma Chameleon"), throws in a few surprises ("That's the Way," "Love is Love") and adds a few unreleased tracks ("Strange Voodoo," "I Just Want to Be Loved").

The Iconic Multi Platinum Selling 80's Pop Legends, Culture Club return home for the holidays and perform ''Live At Wembley'' , after a hugely successful 60 city world tour featuring ALL ORIGINAL MEMBERS featuring Boy George, Roy, Mikey and John, along with an explosive horn section and mind blowing backup soul singers, the band ignites the stage before a sold out hometown crowd, as Boy George commands the Catwalk with his masterful charm and smooth soulful voice, performing the bands biggest hits, showing why Culture Club's unique Pop…

These videos are a nostalgic glimpse back to the 80's, and the songs…well, let's just say that Culture Club had its good moments ("Church of the Poison Mind" and "Karma Chameleon") and its not-so-good moments ("The War Song"). Nevertheless, taken as a whole, this set provides an excellent survey of a trend-setting group's oeuvre…

Life was a long time coming. Culture Club began work on a reunion album in 2014, recording a bunch of tracks with Youth, but that project was scrapped by 2016. Instead, the group decided to retain some of the songs, pluck a few tunes originally planned for a Boy George solo record, add some new cuts, and record all of them as Life, their first album in nearly 20 years. Two decades is a long time and that distance seems even greater thanks to how Culture Club faded after 1983's Colour by Numbers, scoring some hits while George and the rest of the crew figured out how to navigate their seismic international fame. The remarkable thing about Life is how doubt never seems to be part of their equation, either in the composition or the recording.