- published: 27 Dec 2011
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Belinda Jo Carlisle (born August 17, 1958) is an American singer who gained worldwide fame as the lead vocalist of the Go-Go's, one of the most successful all-female bands of all time and the first such group whose members wrote their own songs and played their own instruments. Topping the Billboard charts with the Go-Go's, she sold more than seven million albums in just three years and later went on to a successful solo career with hits "Mad About You", "Summer Rain", "I Get Weak", "Circle in the Sand", "Leave a Light On" and "Heaven Is a Place on Earth" among others, which were major successes in the United States and United Kingdom as well as internationally. Her autobiography, Lips Unsealed, published in June 2010, reached No. 27 on the The New York Times Best Seller list and received favorable reviews. On August 11, 2011, she received, as a member of the Go-Go's, a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Belinda Carlisle was born in the Hollywood district of Los Angeles to Harold, a travelling salesman (he sold vacuum cleaners) and his wife Joanne, who raised the children at home. The first of seven siblings, with three brothers and three sisters, she was five years old when her father abandoned the family and upon her mother's second marriage, did not have a close relationship with her stepfather, Duke Kurczeski. Growing up in Ventura County's Thousand Oaks, a part of the Greater Los Angeles Area, she was a cheerleader at Newbury Park High School and, at the age of 19, left home.