Music Review: Belinda Carlisle will ring in the New Year

Singer Belinda Carlisle’s extraordinary ascent to sustained international pop stardom can be accounted for very simply. Carlisle radiates an irresistible joie de vivre which endears her to any audience and qualifies her as a wholly self-made phenomenon.

Carlisle, who appears Thursday at the Universal Hilton, has skillfully parlayed this self-possessed, emphatic appeal into a stunningly successful 37-year career, one that had a drastically unlikely start in the chaotic, feral crucible of Los Angeles punk rock, where she and guitarist Jane Wiedlin first conceived the Go-Go’s in mid-1978.

“Everything was organic and anything went. It was an energy that’s hard to explain,” Carlisle said. “It was joyous and creative. I’m lucky to have experienced such an amazing time in music.”

The 1981 release of the band’s chart-topping “Beauty & the Beat” album touched off an inferno that burned from coast to coast. Carlisle and her musical sisters’ lustrous pop-punk bonbons not only epitomized the era, they rallied young women together into a gloriously carefree, independent constituency whose enthusiastic fervor was displayed at ear-splitting Beatlemania-level adulation. Anyone who attended a Go-Go’s show that summer can tell you it was an over-the-top, off-the-shoulder, Day-Glo clad and, like, totally ‘80s experience.

“I remember at the time we thought it was weird, seeing girls dressed like us,” Carlisle said. “I think we realized the Go-Go’s were not just music, but fashion and attitude as well. But we didn’t think too much about it.”

The epochal splendor of the band, universally acknowledged as the most successful all-female band in history, eventually became a limitation for its members, and following a 1985 breakup each mutually strayed into work as solo artists.

For Carlisle, it was about leaving the ‘60s girl-group inflected pop-punk of the Go-Go’s behind and crafting a new aesthetic ideal. “I love complicated melody, and lyrics are very important to me,” she said. “I love a song that you can break down and play on an acoustic guitar but will sound just as good as when it is produced. To me, that is a good pop song.”

Her 1987 smash “Heaven is a Place on Earth,” set the tone for her post-Go-Go’s career, with a lush contemporary pop feel that perfectly suited her and her audience — it went to number one in six countries and topped charts all over the world.

“That song really established me as an international artist. The only responsibility I have is to perform it when I do any live show,” Carlisle said. “People love the song, and I love feeling their joy when I perform it.”

Over the years Carlisle has undertaken an impressive roster of creative endeavors, everything from her best-selling autobiography, acting on the big screen and in London’s famed West End Shaftesbury Theater; she remains a prolific recording artist, has gone out on several Go-Go’s reunions and also generously gives her time and effort as an activist for everything from LGBT equality to animal rights.

“I am a co-founder of Animal People Alliance in Calcutta, India,” she said. “I spend, and have spent, quite a bit of time in India through the years and saw that there was a need for street animal services. We provide emergency services, spaying and neutering and also create employment for vulnerable people in Calcutta, mostly women.”

Musically, her next album will be an unusual, and intriguing, reflection of her time in the East.

“I have been practicing Kundalini Yoga for many years and I finally recorded a mantra album — mantras put in a pop song format. It’s interesting and it’s not just music, it’s a science. I’m excited about it. It’s finished, and ready for release, probably in late 2016.”

But at this New Year’s Eve shindig, it is safe to expect a strong dose of classic, pure, Carlisle pop.

“I have to go with my heart in anything I do. Of course we all have to do things we don’t like to do, but for the most part, professionally, if I’m doing it, it’s really because I want to. I love playing live.”

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Who: Belinda Carlisle, plus Frenchie Davis, Rogelio Douglas Jr., David Hernandez, Maya, Jake Simpson

Where: Hilton Universal City’s Sierra Ballroom, 555 Universal Hollywood Dr., Universal City

When: Thursday, Dec. 31, 7 p.m.

Cost: $87 to $325

More info: (866) 468-3399, ChrisIsaacsonPresents.com

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JONNY WHITESIDE is a veteran music journalist based in Burbank and author of “Ramblin’ Rose: the Life & Career of Rose Maddox” and “Cry: the Johnnie Ray Story.”