Belinda Carlisle was supposed to be in semi-retirement, drinking coffee in Mexico and enjoying the quiet. Instead, her son literally ran into Diane Warren at a coffee shop, and suddenly Carlisle had a new EP. “She said, What’s your mom doing? And the next thing I knew Diane was on the phone saying, I have some hits for you. Come down to the studio.” Carlisle admits she wasn’t exactly looking to commit to the grind again. “It’s a good year and a half, two years of your life promoting and recording and doing the whole thing. But I went down to the studio, heard the songs, and just fell in love. So I said, I’m on. And that’s how it happened.”
The result is Kismet, her first English-language pop release in over 20 years, courtesy of a songwriter she’d already made history with in the ‘80s and ‘90s. “I wasn’t thinking I would ever make one again and I was quite happy with that idea,” she says. “I had done the French album, a mantra album… I was happy working from the heart. I really didn’t think I’d be doing an English pop record. I’d worked with the best songwriters in the world. Been there, done that. So this was a big surprise.”
It helps that she doesn’t need the pressure anymore. “If it’s a hit, great. If it’s not a hit, it doesn’t change my life. I can work without the expectations, without the hamster wheel. From age 22 to 45, 47, I was on one. Not anymore.”
But don’t call it a nostalgia trip. The songs pulse with the same DNA as her solo hits but carry new threads from her past two decades of unlikely detours. “If I don’t have a connection, I just don’t do it. I don’t put something out to make fans happy. I have to be happy first,” she says. “And honestly, my French album felt closer to punk rock in spirit than anything I’d done since the Go-Go’s. Even the mantra record—it’s all part of the same thread.”
She sees it in Big Big Love, the EP’s lead single. “It’s a love song, sure, but it could be something much grander. With my life, my routine, my teachers—Ram Dass, Eckhart Tolle, Sadhguru—it all connects. Great love, what love is. There’s always been a connection.”
And if fans hear echoes of “I Get Weak” or “Live Your Life Be Free,” that’s not an accident. “Deeper Into You hearkens back to that,” she says. “It’s a perfect segue from the Live Your Life Be Free album into this EP. Classic production, but more modern too. Except Big Big Love, which was purposely done with that ‘80s feel.”
The real curveball is “Sanity.” “It’s the weirdest song I’ve ever done,” she says proudly. “Probably the most complicated melody I’ve ever sung in my life. We brought in other people for the textures because it needed to be strange. In some ways, it might be my favorite. People are going to go, What was that? and I love throwing it in there.”
Carlisle has always had a soft spot for outliers. She beams when reminded of Real, her 1993 album that turns 30 this year. “That’s one of my favorites. I knew I had to do something different after three albums with Rick Nowels. Real was kind of ahead of its time. Stripped down, organic, playing with loops. It got critical acclaim, but the record company was a mess and it never got a chance. Still, I think it’s a really good album.”
Even now, she carries that instinct to zag when expected to zig. After all, she was singing mantras long before Warren pulled her back into the pop game. And then there was the all-star team-up for 80 for Brady, where she sang alongside Dolly Parton, Cyndi Lauper, Gloria Estefan, and Debbie Harry. “I wish we had a weekly club,” she laughs. “A little text group. I hope something comes up where we can all be in the same room singing it, because it felt really good. What an honor.”
As for the Go-Go’s, don’t hold your breath. Their 2021 single “Club Zero” was supposed to herald a new era, but Carlisle says no one was really into making an album. “Everybody’s gone their own way now. The idea of an album—that’s really intense. We live in different places, and honestly, I wasn’t interested in that commitment either. Club Zero was an amazing song, and a nice way to wrap it up. We cemented the legacy with the Rock Hall. Where do you go from that? Bands can go on too long. Better to stop at the top.” She even points to R.E.M. as an example. “That’s respect, saying ‘we’re done, that’s it.’ It lets people remember you when you were still prime.”
Will Kismet turn into a full album? “When we were working on it, Diane said, Let’s do an album, but by then the release dates and strategies were already set,” Carlisle says. “But I had such a great time, I won’t rule it out. Being in the studio is like putting together a puzzle—and I love puzzles.”
Belinda Carlisle may have tried to retire, but fate had other plans. Or, as she puts it, “Kismet.”
Listen to the interview above and then check out the video below.
