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
As a kid, I would've loved to get a tweet from David Bowie or Joan Rivers or Tom Cruise. It's great that you can communicate with people and it's instant.
I'm not someone who can sing anything. And my favorite singers aren't people whose voice you would say is amazing. I'm a big Bob Dylan fan, a huge David Bowie fan. None of those people have orthodox, cabaret voices. These are people where what they're singing about is just as important as how they're singing it.
Whenever there's an interview with me, I might read it, but I don't read the comments because they're so hateful sometimes. When someone writes something nasty, I just think, "If that's your contribution to my day, I really don't need your impoliteness." I'm lucky that people are very cool with me and I get a lot of love. I appreciate that.
People say things about me all the time and I get over it. I've had some appalling things told about me.
I just go in my back garden. It's the only place where people don't come and bother you.
A lot of people felt I was getting work because I was Boy George. My response at the time was that there's a lot of DJs making records, they're not all making good records, but they have the right to do that.
What's really sad is that a lot of very talented people are being forced to do things that are very embarrassing and I don't intend to be one of them.
Very few people can truly divorce themselves from what they feel emotionally and sexually.
The New Romantic scene was so tiny. Although it got lots of mileage in the media, it was a really small club with only a core group of people. As it got more popular, kids started to come from the suburbs all dressed up, but it -really wasn't as big as it looked.
Warren Street was at the high end of the New Romantic scene. They were mostly college art students and people who knew top designers.
I'm very uncomfortable with the idea of vaginas. They bother me in the way that spiders bother some people.
A lot of people come up to me all the time and say thank you for helping me be who I am. So my thing wasn't just about sexuality. It was about anyone who felt different; anyone who felt out of place. Being gay was one part of it.
Luckily, I'm not one of those people who wants to be young; it's never bothered me.
I know that there are some people who don't like me, and that kind of surprises me more than the people who love me.