Boy George
Boy George
George Alan O'Dowd, known professionally as Boy George, is an English singer, songwriter, DJ, fashion designer and photographer. He is the lead singer of the Grammy and Brit Award-winning pop band Culture Club. At the height of the band's fame, during the 1980s, they recorded global hit songs such as "Do You Really Want to Hurt Me", "Time" and "Karma Chameleon" and George was known for his soulful voice and androgynous appearance. He was part of the English New Romantic...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionPop Singer
Date of Birth14 June 1961
CityLondon, England
A lot of what I've been learning in the last two years is due to therapy - about my sexuality, why things go wrong, why relationships haven't worked. It isn't anything to do with anybody else; it's to do with me.
The most political thing you can do is be yourself
I wear makeup and dress this way because I think it makes me look better. I am not doing it to get people to stare at me. If I wanted to do that I could just put a pot on my head, wear a wedding dress, and run screaming down the street.
I am what I am. There's nothing I can do about it.
There's this illusion that homosexuals have sex and heterosexuals fall in love. That's completely untrue. Everybody wants to be loved.
I stared at his picture for so many hours when I was pre-teen, ... When we were doing the recording for the album I'd look across and there were those eyes, coming out at me like lasers from a picture of 20 years ago. It was wild.
Antony is so honest and so powerful, and that is what makes a true star. I've seen audiences twitch when he performs, because some people get very uncomfortable with such raw vulnerability. But I love it. It's what we need.
In the '60s everybody wanted to be the Beatles or the Stones, in the '70s there were bands everybody tried to emulate, like Led Zeppelin. And I think in the '80s you had lots of bands that had quite individual sounds, ... '80s Rewind.
I didn't think anyone was going to buy 'Do You Really Wanna Hurt Me?' It was really personal, not a hit record, I thought. I wanted us to sound completely different. Shows how much I knew.
I've never felt as though I didn't belong, I just acted as though I did.
I'm much more interested in working and getting on with my music.
I'm a big fan of Yoko, one of those weird people who really love her music, and who argues with people all the time, because people do write her off.
I don't really feel part of the pop scene.
I used to think of George Michael as being mechanical, like a scientist in a white coat, working in a laboratory, creating perfect harmonies, and all the while I was secretly admiring him.