1981–1983: Formation and Kissing to Be Clever In 1981,
Blitz Club regular Boy George occasionally sang with the group
Bow Wow Wow, performing under the stage name Lieutenant Lush with the group. George began to get attention with his occasional performances with the group, greatly upsetting the group's lead singer
Annabella Lwin. Culture Club formed in 1981. The band's name was chosen when they realized that they had a gay frontman of Irish ethnicity (George), a
black Briton (Craig) on bass, a blond Englishman (Hay) on guitar and keyboards, and a Jewish drummer (Moss). The group recorded demos, which were paid for by
EMI Records, but the label was unimpressed and decided not to sign the group.
Virgin Publishing heard the demos and signed the group to a songwriting contract.
Virgin Records then offered the group a recording deal, releasing the albums in
Europe, while
Epic Records released their albums in
North America and much of the rest of the world. The band released two singles in May and June 1982, "White Boy" and "I'm Afraid of Me", though both failed to chart. In September of that year, Virgin released their third single, "
Do You Really Want to Hurt Me", a reggae-influenced number, which became one of their biggest hits.
Kissing to Be Clever was certified platinum in US for 1 million shipped copies.
1983–1984: Colour by Numbers The band's second album,
Colour by Numbers (UK No. 1, US No. 2), was released in 1983. The first single, "
Church of the Poison Mind", featuring backing vocalist
Helen Terry, reached the UK and US Top 10. The second single, "
Karma Chameleon", gave the band their biggest hit, hitting No. 1 in the UK (the band's second chart-topper there), where it became the best-selling single of 1983 and has sold 1.5 million copies there to date. It also peaked at No. 1 in the US for three consecutive weeks, and would ultimately hit No. 1 in 30 countries, thus becoming one of the top twenty best-selling singles of the 1980s and selling seven million copies worldwide, with one of the most iconic images of Boy George on the cover shot by photographer
David Levine. The album
Colour by Numbers would spawn more hits including "
Miss Me Blind" (#5 US), "
It's a Miracle" (#4 UK, No. 13 US), and "
Victims" (#3 UK), and sold four million copies in the US alone and another five million copies worldwide, at the time of its release. The album gave Culture Club the distinction of being the first group in music history to have an album certified diamond in Canada (for sales of one million copies in that country). The band also won the 1984
Brit Award for Best Group and the
Grammy Award for Best New Artist, where George gave a speech via satellite stating, "Thank you, America. You've got taste, style, and you know a good drag queen when you see one." The group's back-up singer,
Helen Terry, began work on her solo album, for which George and Hay wrote the song "Love Lies Lost". The pair also wrote "Passing Friend" for the
Beach Boys' album. Culture Club wrote two songs for the soundtrack to the movie
Electric Dreams. George and Hay wrote "The Dream" and "Love Is Love", with the latter being released as a single in Canada, Japan and South America, where the E.P "Love is Love" became a major hit in Brazil. George also collaborated on the song "Electric Dreams", sung by
P. P. Arnold. The song was written with
Phil Pickett (former member of the 1970s band
Sailor) who had also co-written "Karma Chameleon" and frequently played keyboards for the group. Despite Culture Club's commercial success, there were significant pressures within the band and George was using drugs with money earned from his new-found fame. George and Moss were also romantically involved with each other, which was unknown to the public and the media at the time. Their relationship lasted for over four years and was often turbulent, with alleged physical and verbal abuse from both sides. Their constant arguments and the pressure to hide the relationship from the public started to take its toll on the band.
1984–1986: Waking Up with the House on Fire, From Luxury to Heartache and decline In 1984, the group released their third album
Waking Up with the House on Fire (UK No. 2, US No. 26). Although certified platinum in both the UK and the US, it was a commercial and critical disappointment compared to their first two albums. The album contained the hit single "The War Song", which reached No. 2 in the UK, and Top 20 in the US. Other singles like "Mistake No. 3" (US No. 33) and "The Medal Song" (UK No. 32) would only become modest hits. George later stated he felt the album experienced a lukewarm reception because of half-hearted material he felt they released due to pressure from Virgin and Epic. Also, according to him, the band had just come off an exhausting world tour, in 1984. At the end of 1984, Boy George was recruited by
Bob Geldof to join the
Band Aid recording, consisting of mostly internationally known UK and Irish recording stars. George was in New York City for an appearance on
Late Night with David Letterman when Geldof called him, but managed to catch the final
Concorde of the day to London and was the last singer to record a lead vocal track for the song "
Do They Know It's Christmas?". The song would become the biggest selling single of all time in the UK and a huge international hit, raising millions for famine victims in several African nations, particularly Ethiopia. Due to the break-up of his relationship with Moss, and all the ensuing tension with the rest of the band, George turned to relief in drugs. Consequently, he soon developed a self-destructive drug
addiction, which in merely four months escalated from
marijuana to
heroin. By 1986, George had become seriously
addicted. The recording of their fourth studio album, 1986's
From Luxury to Heartache (UK No. 10, US No. 32) dragged on for so long that producer
Arif Mardin had to abandon the sessions due to prior commitments and leave it to engineer Lew Hahn to finish the sessions. Nevertheless, the first single "
Move Away" became a hit, peaking at UK No. 7 and US No. 12 and made appear that the album would return the group back to its previous success. But by the time of the release of the second single "God Thank You Woman", news of George's drug addiction began to circulate in British and American
tabloids, and the second single stalled on its way up the charts, failing to make a big impact. George and Moss also no longer wanted to be around each other due to the constant relationship battles and with George's addiction.
From Luxury to Heartache began to fade from the charts as well, and the album ultimately sold fewer than one million copies worldwide at the time of release. By the summer of 1986, George finally admitted that he was addicted to drugs. In July of that year, he was arrested by the British police for possession of heroin. Culture Club disbanded in 1986.
Reunions 1989 The band first tried to reunite in 1989, after many requests from Tony Gordon, the group's former manager and George's manager at that time. George agreed to try some songs with the band again, resulting in recording sessions and producing more than a dozen songs that remain unreleased. George, however, was more excited about his future projects like his record label, More Protein, and his new
acid house project
Jesus Loves You. The proposed reunion ended up being cancelled.
1998–2000, 2002 In 1998, George and Moss put their differences aside and the band reunited to do a reunion tour, kicking off with a performance on
VH1 Storytellers. The tour was a major success.
Greatest Moments, a compilation album based around the
Storytellers performance, was released, and went platinum in UK. It included new songs such as "
I Just Wanna Be Loved", which hit UK No. 4. However, their new-found success was short-lived and their fifth studio album, ''
Don't Mind If I Do'', released in 1999, peaked at No. 64 in the UK. It included minor UK hits in "Your Kisses Are Charity" (UK No. 25) and "Cold Shoulder" (UK No. 43). This performance was released on DVD the following year. A proposed tour for December 2006 in the UK did not take place.
2011 In late 2011, George was part of a three-man Culture Club band that performed two live concerts, in Dubai and Sydney, the latter being a New Year's Eve concert, although Moss did not appear due to a back injury. However, the band were unable to tour in the US, due to George being denied a visa three years prior.
2014–present In 2014, the band reformed and announced a tour and a new album. A new picture of the four members was also posted on the band's official website, along with the list of the 11 UK concert dates. The band travelled to Spain for a two-week recording session. 18 new tracks were completed for a new album produced by
Youth. The new album, entitled
Tribes, was scheduled for release in early 2015 on the band's own label Different Man Music (via
Kobalt Label Services). At the end of that year, the album had still not materialised. On 19 July 2014, the band were among the line-up for a two-hour concert in
Edinburgh Castle, ahead of the opening ceremony of the Commonwealth Games in
Glasgow. Hay did not perform with the band because he was in recovery after having knee surgery. The band played two songs, "Do You Really Want to Hurt Me" and "Karma Chameleon" which were shown on BBC TV. In mid-November 2014, two days before the start of their 21-date US and UK tour, Culture Club announced they had to cancel the tour due to George suffering from a serious throat condition. The cancelled tour would have represented the full original line-up's first tour in 12 years. The North American tour was eventually rescheduled and started on 17 July 2015 in Canada. A television documentary,
Boy George and Culture Club: Karma to Calamity, aired on
BBC Four on 6 March 2015. The programme documented the band's reunion in 2014 and the making of their new album in Spain, up to the announcement to cancel the tour. Based on the popularity of 2015's mini-tour, Culture Club embarked on a 60-city world tour in 2016. The major success of this tour culminated in a DVD/CD/Blu-ray release,
Live at Wembley: World Tour 2016. In August 2016, the band announced that the album
Tribes was permanently shelved, and offered refunds to all those who had pre-ordered the album online. In 2018, Culture Club toured the US and Europe from June to December. Dubbed
The Life Tour, the band toured in support of their
namesake album, along with supporting acts
the B-52s,
Tom Bailey (formerly of
the Thompson Twins) and
Belinda Carlisle (Europe dates only). Jon Moss was originally part of the line-up, but did not participate in the European leg of the tour. A spokeswoman for Boy George confirmed: "Jon's taking a break from Culture Club but the door is open in the future." In December 2019, Moss filed a writ at London's High Court naming the band trio as defendants. Moss' lawyers say he was told to "take a break" by manager
Paul Kemsley, demanding nearly £200,000 in missing payments and a share of profits. Moss officially left Culture Club in May 2021. Culture Club returned to the SSE Arena in Wembley on 19 December 2020 for a livestream concert broadcast around the world, in response to the ongoing
COVID-19 pandemic. Titled 'Rainbow in the Dark', the concert saw the band play their classic hits, new material, including a new ballad version of "
Karma Chameleon" featuring Mila, and covers of
T. Rex's "
Get It On (Bang a Gong)" and George's solo cover of
Bread's "
Everything I Own". Culture Club toured in 2022 with a residency in Las Vegas and select amphitheaters across the United States. They also served as an opening act for
Rod Stewart on his
Greatest Hits tour in the UK in June and July 2023, and in addition to continuing their Las Vegas residency that February, Culture Club embarked on a U.S. summer tour titled
The Letting It Go Show, with
Howard Jones and
Berlin serving as opening acts. == Awards and achievements ==