Belinda Carlisle was unsure whether she wanted to return to music.
The 64-year-old singer – who has 31-year-old son James with husband Morgan Mason – was the lead singer of renowned rock group The Go-Gos and went on to achieve a string of hits in her own right in the 1980s but had been “ready to slow down” when her son’s chance meeting with legendary songwriter Diane Warren led to a spontaneous career revival.
She told The Daily Star Sunday’s Wired column: “I was ready to slow down, had done pretty much everything in my career, and then my son ran into Diane Warren. She said, ‘What is your mum doing? Let’s get her on the phone!’ So they Facetimed me and she said, ‘Get down to the studio, I have some hits for you. I thought, do I really want to go there and open that door? Then I thought I’d be stupid not to hear her out!”
The ‘Heaven is a Place on Earth’ hitmaker went on to explain that upon hearing the song ‘Big Big Love’ , she “freaked out” and immediately said yes to Diane – who has sold 125 million records and written nine number-one hits – as she noted that a host of “weird coincidences” led to her recording her new EP ‘Kismet’, more than five years after she last released an album.
She added: “She played me ‘Big Big Love’ and I freaked out and said, ‘I wanna sing this song! You can’t say no to the women who has written more hit songs than anyone else! I adore her. I ended up recording five songs and calling the EP Kismet because that really encapsulates what happened. All these weird coincidences that lead me to singing.”
‘Kismet’ is out now.