BEAUTY AND THE BEAT
Beauty and the Beat is the debut album from Californian all-female band The Go-Go’s. Released in 1981 on the IRS Records label, the album was preceded by the single and signature song “We Got the Beat”, which became a massive club hit in Europe and, later, the United States. The LP sold in excess of two million copies and reached double platinum status, making it one of the most successful debut albums of all time. Critically acclaimed, it has been described as one of the “cornerstone albums of American new wave”. The title is a play on the European fairy tale “Beauty and the Beast”. (More from Wikipedia)
The American songwriter/producer trio of Bob Feldman, Jerry Goldstein and Richard Gottehrer has been a veritable cauldron of one-hit wonders over the years. I later saw Richard Gottehrer’s name on recordings by Blondie, and he produced the first two albums by the Go-Go’s, Beauty and the Beat and Vacation.
(May 2012)
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Another band from the same time period, the Go-Go’s became popular even beyond their hit songs and albums. Their first album, the triple-platinum Beauty and the Beat is one of the top selling debut albums of all time and is described by Stephen Thomas Erlewine in Allmusic as being “one of the cornerstone albums of American new wave”.
(November 2013)
