Culture Club - Music

Music

Culture Club are a British pop band, whose sound combines British new wave and American soul with Jamaican reggae and also other styles as calypso, salsa or country.

Philadelphia Daily News described Culture Club as a hot new rock act, while William K Knoedelseder Jr from Los Angeles Times said about the group, "Boy George of Culture Club, a rock group MTV helped make popular", adding that, "There's some debate in the record industry about MTV's ability to directly increase record sales across the board but there's no doubt that the channel has been responsible for exposing such rock artists as Def Leppard, Duran Duran and Men at Work to a national audience...".

In the 1980s, Boy George said about the music style of his band Culture Club, "We play rock 'n' roll and I love rock 'n' roll music but I don't like the lifestyle. I don't like people tipping beer over their heads.... I just hate rock 'n' roll in that way. It's disgusting and boring. I look at what we're doing as very intelligent".

When Culture Club won the 1984 Grammy Award for Best New Artist, Philadelphia Inquirer said about the band, "Among the other major winners were the English rock band Culture Club (Best New Artist), hard-rock vocalist Pat Benatar (Best Rock Vocal Performance, Female) and the English rock trio The Police (Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group)".

Stephen Holden, music critic for The New York Times, said in his article Rock: British Culture Club, that the popular quartet, "Culture Club blends soul, rock, funk, reggae and salsa into a music that programmatically reconciles white, black and Latin styles", adding that, "Mr. O'Dowd made the group's best songs – the Motown-flavoured Do You Really Want to Hurt Me and the Latin-inflected dance tune I'll Tumble 4 Ya – shine like jewels".

Star-News considered Culture Club as a 'new rock' band of the 1980s, the newspaper said, "Now you see the more rhythm-oriented, 'new rock of the 80s,' like Culture Club and the Eurythmics, fitting in more easily with urban contemporary formats".

Stephen Thomas Erlewine, senior editor for Allmusic, described specifically Culture Club as a new wave band and generically as the most successful pop/rock group in America and England during the 1980s, adding that, "By 1986, the group had broken up, leaving behind several singles that rank as classics of the new wave era".

The music of the English pop band Culture Club, is basically a combination of new wave and soul, is described by Boy George himself as he says, "The aim is to be creatively fluid to make everything we do a little different. We want to be a bridge between white rock and black soul", adding that, "I want Culture Club to represent all peoples and minorities".

The pop band, also described as pop/rock, was part of the second British rock invasion of the 1980s in the United States as R. Serge Denisoff and William L. Schurk said in their book Tarnished gold: the record industry revisited, "Here comes the rock and roll of 1984. The invaders were a mixed bunch led by Culture Club, whose sound has been described as 'recycled Smokey Robinson' or 'torchy American schmaltz and classic Motown'", adding that, "Boy George's drag-queen appearance made the group a natural for the visual demands of cable television".

In her book Magazines for children: a guide for parents, teachers, and librarians, author Selma K. Richardson said that Culture Club's music is soft rock that contains, "enough soul and new wave elements to cover almost all audiences".