Culture Club

Culture Club's Colour by Numbers secures lead singer Boy George's place as a blue-eyed
soul balladeer of the first rank. If he has yet to match the heights of the soul elite – the
delicate refinement of Smokey Robinson or the rich gospel fervor of Gladys Knight, both of
whom he sometimes resembles–Boy George is still artistically the real thing, a singer who
continually and instinctively communicates passion in an era awash with cynical... More >

Boy George really doesn't sound like Smokey Robinson, you know--not the way Frankie Miller sounds like Otis Redding, not even the way John Cougar sounds like Bruce Springsteen. If he did, he could probably put this tuneful collection all the way over--Smokey's spiritual gravity has redeemed some pretty lightweight lyrics, so this sensual specificity might just salvage some vague ones. As it is, George's warm, well-meaning, slightly clumsy croon signifies most effectively when it has the least to say--when it's most purely a medium for his warm, well-meaning, slightly clumsy self. Just like Helen Terry, who packs the voice of Merry Clayton into the body of Gertrude Stein, his real aim in life is to reenact the story of the ugly duckling--and to radiate the kind of extreme tolerance that's so often engendered by extreme sexual ambiguity. (Grade: B+)