Belinda Carlisle – Coogee Bay Hotel
For a few years in the late 1980s, Belinda Carlisle was one of the biggest pop stars in the world. Albums Runaway Horses and Heaven On Earth were worldwide multi-million sellers, and she had a dream run of hit singles, courtesy of one of the world’s best pop songwriting teams, Rick Nowels and Ellen Shipley.
In 1990, at the height of her stardom, she played a sell-out show at the Sydney Entertainment Centre as part of her biggest Australian tour.
Two decades on and with her hitmaking days having finished some 15 years ago, Carlisle this month slinked into the country all but unannounced, schlepping her band to suburban venues like the Rooty Hill RSL and Doncaster Shoppingtown Hotel.
Surely a well-promoted night at the State Theatre or the Enmore would’ve been more appropriate for a pop star of her stature?
Perhaps not. The enthusiastic crowd at last night’s Coogee Bay Hotel concert were there to relive the songs of their youth — maybe a beachside pub with sticky carpets and vodka slushies on tap really was the best home for Carlisle’s brand of wide-eyed, impassioned power-pop.
The now 52-year-old singer delivered a hit-heavy set, mixing anthems from her solo heyday with a smattering of Go-Go’s classics. There were no album tracks to be found, nor any material from her most recent album — 2007’s French-language covers collection Voila — despite Carlisle announcing mid-set that it was her favourite work to date. Just wall to wall singles.
The first mass crowd singalong happened three songs in, with a performance of the enduring hit In Too Deep, and continued any time Carlisle reached another of those trademark impassioned Rick Nowels choruses: “Live your life, be free!”
“Darling, leave a light on for me!” “We dream the same dream, we want the same thing — WHOA, WHOA!”
Carlisle was in fine voice throughout, and by the time she’d reached her climactic encore — Go-Go’s classics Vacation, Our Lips Are Sealed and We Got The Beat played in quick succession, followed by an extended version of her signature song, Heaven Is A Place On Earth — the joy in the room was palpable.
