They may no longer be billed as “Boy George and Culture Club”, as they were on their last UK tour, and there may be a 12-piece band (missing only exiled original drummer Jon Moss) and some state of the art visuals – but go to a Culture Club concert in 2024 and it is still very much Boy George’s realm.
At the O2 on Sunday night, he seemed every inch the singular pop star he’s been since 1982. Appearing during funky opener “White Boy” via a raised red telephone box (where he spent a lot of his teenage years for the privacy, he told us), he looked ever-stylish in sparkling fedora and grey jacket with post-it notes of punkish slogans stuck all over it.
He’s from nearby Eltham in south London, so this was a hometown show, and he held court garrulously: he gave a potted history of his youthful escapades; he cackled at his own jokes; he vaingloriously namedropped and told us that the Sex Pistols manager Malcolm McLaren once called him “a Vauxhall Tavern drag queen… and that was before drag queens were hip”. It was fun, and all very Boy George.
But when the between-song chat is more entertaining than the concert itself, something has gone wrong. The finale to a UK tour playing their first two albums in full – 1982’s Kissing to be Clever and 1983’s Colour by Numbers – fell strangely flat for a band who were celebrating their heyday, and who once seemed so outrageous. It wasn’t just Boy George’s androgyny and open attitude to his sexuality that made Culture Club a radical proposition in Thatcher’s Britain – their poppy blend of reggae, funk, calypso and soul was purposely diverse. “We are the multicultural club,” Boy George said at the outset, before knowingly adding, “from a time when you didn’t have to think about it.”
But for all the proficiency of the band – which includes original guitarist/keyboardist Roy Hay and bassist Mikey Craig as well as an impressive brass section – the gig never really took off. Played non-chronologically, the first 30 minutes of Kissing to be Clever was one perfectly adequate album track after another, not helped by Boy George’s voice: what was once one of the most soulfully sweet sounds in pop history is now sadly reduced to a husk.
The show only really came to life seven songs in with “I’ll Tumble 4 Ya”, the night’s first golden pop moment, a brilliant bit of sun-kissed and colourful calypso-pop. The more reggae-heavy version of “Do You Really Want to Hurt Me” was met with huge cheers and relief but Boy George’s coarser voice couldn’t match the moment, with the three backing singers doing much of the heavy lifting.
The second half improved, as better songs from Colour by Numbers, which sold 10 million copies, showed a sharper pop instinct. Preceded by old interview footage, they began in lively fashion with “Church of the Poison Mind”, which wore its Motown influence more loudly, and “It’s a Miracle”, which was fantastically supple and funky. Later, “Miss Me Blind” did a fine impression of New York disco. The showstopping ballad “Victims” was dark and dramatic, though Boy George gave way mid-song to a backing singer. But there were still lulls, during which Boy George wasn’t alone in his struggle: the faithful crowd, eager for some pre-Christmas cheer, simply disengaged.
The encore provided some salvation: sandwiching an animated (if endlessly dragged-out) soul-glam take on “Get it On” by T.Rex, Boy George’s enduring influence, were two gems: “Time (Clock of the Heart”), a standalone single from 1983, and a finale of “Karma Chameleon”, inevitably greeted like the British classic it is. But it wasn’t enough to save a disappointing night.
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