Belinda Carlisle on Covering ’60s and ’70s AM Radio Hits She Grew Up on for New Album, ‘Once Upon a Time in California,’ and This Year’s Go-Go’s Reunion
The Go-Go’s were good and all, but you know who really had the beat? The DJs who powered KHJ and KRLA in the 1960s and early ’70s, when seemingly every kid in Los Angeles was tuned in to one of just a couple of stations driving the city’s music culture. At least that is the working thesis behind Belinda Carlisle‘s just-released new album, “Once Upon a Time in California,” a collection of covers of some of the oldies that informed her own youth growing up in Burbank before she bacame part of the nascent punk incursion.
The album includes her versions of such songs as “The Air That I Breathe,” “Get Together,” “Anyone Who Had a Heart,” “Never My Love” and even the Carpenters’ “Superstar.” It’s an exceedingly gentle follow-up to the more aggressive sounds that were on display when the Go-Go’s reunited for a handful of California dates this year, most notably Coachella. But in Carlisle’s mind, there’s room for both Karen Carpenter and Darby Crash appreciation.
Carlisle talked with Variety about the long-in-the-works covers album, how the Go-Go’s reunion went (and whether there could be more or not), and where her eclectic tastes drift when she’s at home in Mexico.
We knew you’ve had an album of ‘60s and ‘70s covers in the works for a while. It came up when we were talking about your last project, the Diane Warren-produced “Kismet” EP, and you said it was on the back burner then. What brought it back to the front?
I started it before the pandemic. When we started compiling the list in 2017, it was about a hundred or 150 songs, and little by little, we weeded the list down. I was going back and forth to L.A. from Thailand [where she lived in the 2010s], and when I’d have work in the States, I would work a week or so in the studio with Gabe. Then the pandemic happened, and that took out two years, and then, during the pandemic, I moved here [Mexico]. We actually just finished it in January. So it’s been a long time in the works, it’s true.
Was the idea to have it be all songs you connected with in your youth? Or were there some that you didn’t appreciate when you were a kid but came around to later, without the direct nostalgic connection?
No, no. They’re all songs that I loved when I was growing up and listening to California radio. Music was a big, big part of my life, starting from 8, 9 years old, and in Southern California at that time, music was a big part of the culture.. Growing up in Burbank, California, for me the radio was an escape. I’d go to my best friend’s house every day during the summer and just lay in front of the speaker with 93 KHJ and KRLA and all the great DJs. So they’re all songs that I loved and that I connected with and that inspired me to want to be a singer one day. I have a personal connection with all of them.
I tried singing “Holiday” by the Bee Gees, which is such a weird, great song. I mean, Barry Gibb, for me, is like — that’s it. So I would try things and go, nah… But the criteria was that it had to be something that I loved and connected with as a young girl.
You don’t have any Beach Boys songs on here. But you have a big Brian Wilson connection — you sang on the Beach Boys tribute special a few years ago, and you paid tribute to him when he died. Was it too obvious, or too difficult, to include one of those?
I think it’s too difficult. In my experience, covering different artists, like with the Bee Gees, for instance — and Crowded House is another one — their chord progressions are so strange, and it’s a certain sound that it’s really hard to replicate, or even to do well if you’re not gonna replicate it. So, for me, I think I got my nod to the Beach Boys in during “Never My Love” [a cover of a song by the Assocation], when I got to go crazy building the vocal arrangement.
I worked with with Brian Wilson on a couple of his albums; I sang backups and got to watch him work, and then he did the same thing for me, singing backgrounds on a song called “California” that I did on my album “A Woman and a Man.” So I would say that there was actually a nod to the Beach Boys on the album, but it would be impossible for me to cover a Beach Boys song. Impossible. I wouldn’t touch it.
Some of the songs on your album are very gentle, but then something like Burt Bacharach’s “Anyone Who had a Heart,” which was a hit for Dionne Warwick, is a song that you have to do some belting on to make it work.
It was really fun to sing because that’s not really something that I do. I love Bacharach and grew up hearing him on the radio all the time, or Dionne Warwick and whatnot. But, it was challenging, but it wasn’t that hard. I got to just have fun with it. I think the most challenging song for me on the album was probably “Everybody’s Talkin’.” That was the hardest one. Another song that was challenging for me was “If You Could Read My Mind” (by Gordon Lightfoot). That was kind of hard, too. But it was all fun. It wasn’t anything that was really challenging for me, to be honest.
Did any of the artists from that era stay on your personal playlist throughout the decades?
I think the one artist that I’ve listened to most consistently, even before I made the album, was probably Harry Nilsson, because I was such a big fan of him as an artist and songwriter. And I got to know him, because I used to go to my husband’s restaurant all the time and hold court every night.
The Hollies song you chose for the first single and video, “The Air That I Breathe,” is so melodically rich and unusual, the way the melody rises and falls and rises and falls until it gets to that big sustain that can only be answered by that memorable guitar lick. Was there a reason why that one jumped out at you as a single?
The way they do things (with singles) these days, I don’t quite understand, but they left it to me, and I loved the way that song turned out. When we were recording it. I really wanted to build the choruses and make it anthemic. It is a weird song, and the chord progressions really are strange in that song. And there’s a darkness to it that I like. But since they let me pick it, I just picked that because it seemed kind of like something that was similar to other things I’ve done. Like, I guess Belinda… I don’t like talking about myself in the third person, but it was very Belinda, I guess, if there’s a signature sound.
Any way to identify what the Belinda sound is?
It’s like lush choruses, sort of anthemic, romantic… (“The Air That I Breathe”) kind of reminds me in some ways, and I don’t know if you even know the song, but a song I did called “Summer Rain,” which is very me, but also there’s a melancholy kind of twist to it.
In a statement you released about the album, you talked about how there’s a California that doesn’t exist anymore and it reminds you of something more innocent. It’s interesting to think about what the California dream represents to people, partly because of Brian Wilson passing, but then also just because of people hating on California lately and some MAGA folks saying Los Angeles is a cesspool.
It’s not the same. It’s different. I still go back there and sometimes if I have time, I’ll make a trip up to Thousand Oaks and go over the hill to the area north of Malibu where my boyfriend used to surf all the time, that big dune that goes up the side of the mountain. There’s still a magic there. A couple years ago, I drove from Reno over to Modesto, believe it or not. We went through that whole area where it’s just so majestic with the mountains and the pines, and it was like, this is like the California of my dreams. Once in a while something will sort of evoke those feelings of the California of old, and north of Malibu has that still, a little bit. It’s the way the sun shines.
I remember my parents used to get all the kids in the station wagon and drive through Laurel Canyon, and then they would go by Frank Zappa’s log cabin and my dad would go, “Oh, look at those hippies,” and I would think, “Oh, they’re so cool. One day I wanna be just like that.” And then I got to be a punk (instead). In retrospect, I can’t believe how close those things were. It was ‘72 (toward the end of the counterculture movement), and then ‘77 was when the punk scene really started happening with Slash magazine. There were like 50 kids — like, 50 of us — and then it exploded. But it was right on the back of the Laurel Canyon thing.
There were a few of us who liked both the Eagles and X during those transitional years, but mostly people were picking one wave and not all of them.
California radio started changing when I was in high school, like a sophomore, junior or senior, which is when it went from the kind of pop that’s on this album to music that I appreciate now but I did not like then. I did not like the Doobie Brothers or the Eagles or any of that. And then of course, in art class I discovered Iggy and Roxy Music and all that and it was like, oh my God. But that was when radio sort of went the way of Seals and Crofts and America and all that, which was OK.
Looking at the cover photo…
I was afraid that people would think it was the red sky from the fires. I was like, no, no, no, no, no! I hope you didn’t think that.
No, no, Actually, it feels reminiscent of a vintage Norman Seeff-photographed cover from back in the day. It seemed like he always would be having covers outdoors with a brightly lit singer in the foreground, as if they were lit up by headlights or something, and a sunset in the background.
Actually, that’s a really good reference, because I haven’t heard that name in years and years, but he was the man of the moment in California in the ‘70s and early ‘80s. And wasn’t his partner Taryn Power, who is Tyrone Power’s daughter? He was great. And it is kind of like that. That was actually from a photo session I did a couple of years ago. And the album cover was totally different. And then John Stapleton, the art director, just played with the photo session and superimposed the beach and stuff in the background. So it’s not really a beach.
So we can just pretend you tromped down to the beach at night in your best dress and plopped yourself in the sand at night.
Yeah, exactly.
There is some consistency to some of your recent fashion. The sparkly dress you arewearing in that photo reminds me of the sparkly top you were wearing at Coachella.
Yeah, one’s a top and one’s a dress. Same. It’s the same designer (Rachel Oroczog). It’s my oldest best friend — she has a clothing line, so she sort of helped me this time to make an effort for Coachella and all the Go-Go’s stuff, and then she did the dress for the album cover.
Producer Gabe Lopez is somebody who worked with you on your last complete solo album.
He did, which was “Wilder Shores,” the Sanskrit chanting album that I did. He was a friend of my son’s that I met and he is probably about 25 years younger than me. So a few of these songs on the album, he didn’t even know. But he had the same sort of pop sensibility, and it was fun showing him these songs that he’d never heard of. But we work really well together — same sensibilities.
It was fun for everyone seeing you back with the Go-Go’s at Coachella and Cruel World and a few isolated California dates. When we last talked a couple years ago, you made it sound like the Go-Go’s were very much in the past for you. You sakid then the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction put a nice cap on things. Does it just ends up being a never say never situation?
Always. I mean, we don’t have any plans to do anything. And the only reason why we really got back to the Go-Go’s to play is because of the Coachella offer. We thought that’s something you don’t turn down, because it’s pretty amazing for the legacy of the band. So we said yeah, and we put some shows around it. I can’t say never because I’ve been proved wrong so many times, saying “never again.” But I don’t see… There’s nothing planned at all. You know, we don’t have any management. Everybody has their own lives. We live in different parts of the world. It’s very hard for everybody to get together now. So we’ll see. But like I said, I can never say never with it as far as the Go-Go’s go.
If these did end up being the last shows you would ever do, at least you had all five of you back on stage at once, which hadn’t been the case with Gina Schock being out from an injury on the last mini-tour, replaced for that stint with Clem Burke (who died earlier this year). Other members had been out for various reasons in various reunions before that.
Exactly — we had Gina. And, you know, Clem was amazing. It was so much fun singing with him singing in the background. But it was great having Gina back and she hadn’t played with the band since I think 2018. So it’d been a long time. It went really well. It couldn’t have gone any better, actually. Not at all.
You have a short solo tour in England, I think. Do you foresee doing a tour in the States?
I don’t have anything planned. I mean, I probably will. I do have some dates at the end of the year on the east coast, andI will probably do some west coast stuff stuff next year. But I don’t know. I mean, it’s for the first time in my life when I don’t really have anything for next year at all in the books. Not that I can’t, because if I wanted to, I could definitely have that. But I like being home. I like not living out of a suitcase. and I’ve been on the road pretty much since I was 19, 20 years old. So, it’s kind of nice. I’m having this life where I’m actually home and able to go to weddings and other events. I never really got to do that. I missed out on normal stuff for a long time, so it’s kind of nice being doing normal things again.
You still have your animal activism, including a benefit coming up.
I have my charity and project that I co-founded in 2014. We started in India, we expanded into Thailand, and 100,000 animals later, it’s like the most successful animal NGO in the state of Bengal in India. We’re expanding into Mexico now, and we’re now filing the paperwork for my donkey sanctuary. It’s probably breaking ground in about six months. And that’s kind of my baby.
So that’s a dream of yours for a while.
Yeah, totally. I’ve always wanted to have a donkey sanctuary. Always, always, always. For years and years I’ve always talked about it and I just put it out there. I thought somebody’s gonna come along, and I don’t know how, but it’ll happen, and I just forgot about it. And then all these weird coincidences happened, so now, yeah, near San Miguel.
Just to tie things together musically, where do your interests most lie now? It was so much fun for fans seeing you reconnect with that punky spirit with the Go-Go’s, even doing some of those early songs that have been forgotten. And then here you’re feeling just as comfortable covering the Carpenters obviously. And you’ve taken some detours with the chant stuff and the French stuff. What touches you in your soul musically now?
Right now I listen to a lot of devotional music, like Hindu chants. I listen to a lot of chanting, Sikh chanting. I love that, because it’s powerful. But I mean, I love Yungblood, because he’s unapologetically a rock star, and I think music really misses that. I can’t remember the last time we had an amazing, sexy rock star, and I think he ticks all the boxes, so I like him. Chappell Roan, of course, I like her. But mostly around the house and stuff, I listen to opera and like devotional music. And punk-rock. I still listen to the Clash, and I love Midnight Oil and I still listen to them. I have been going back to Wall of Voodoo. I mean, “Mexican Radio” — come on.
Speaking of Mexico… we know how much you love living there. So are you going to do a sequel to “Once Upon a Time in California” someday and make it… “Once Upon a Time in Mexico”?
I know! You know something? I mean, actually, I was working on something with this producer here (in Mexico), and I got so busy, I just sort of forgot about it, but who knows? It might be like another voila — just classic songs of Mexico without doing any cultural appropriation. That’s the thing. But I love mariachi music and I love a lot of the artists here.
The album includes her versions of such songs as “The Air That I Breathe,” “Get Together,” “Anyone Who Had a Heart,” “Never My Love” and even the Carpenters’ “Superstar.” It’s an exceedingly gentle follow-up to the more aggressive sounds that were on display when the Go-Go’s reunited for a handful of California dates this year, most notably Coachella. But in Carlisle’s mind, there’s room for both Karen Carpenter and Darby Crash appreciation.
Carlisle talked with Variety about the long-in-the-works covers album, how the Go-Go’s reunion went (and whether there could be more or not), and where her eclectic tastes drift when she’s at home in Mexico.
We knew you’ve had an album of ‘60s and ‘70s covers in the works for a while. It came up when we were talking about your last project, the Diane Warren-produced “Kismet” EP, and you said it was on the back burner then. What brought it back to the front?
I started it before the pandemic. When we started compiling the list in 2017, it was about a hundred or 150 songs, and little by little, we weeded the list down. I was going back and forth to L.A. from Thailand [where she lived in the 2010s], and when I’d have work in the States, I would work a week or so in the studio with Gabe. Then the pandemic happened, and that took out two years, and then, during the pandemic, I moved here [Mexico]. We actually just finished it in January. So it’s been a long time in the works, it’s true.
Was the idea to have it be all songs you connected with in your youth? Or were there some that you didn’t appreciate when you were a kid but came around to later, without the direct nostalgic connection?
No, no. They’re all songs that I loved when I was growing up and listening to California radio. Music was a big, big part of my life, starting from 8, 9 years old, and in Southern California at that time, music was a big part of the culture.. Growing up in Burbank, California, for me the radio was an escape. I’d go to my best friend’s house every day during the summer and just lay in front of the speaker with 93 KHJ and KRLA and all the great DJs. So they’re all songs that I loved and that I connected with and that inspired me to want to be a singer one day. I have a personal connection with all of them.
I tried singing “Holiday” by the Bee Gees, which is such a weird, great song. I mean, Barry Gibb, for me, is like — that’s it. So I would try things and go, nah… But the criteria was that it had to be something that I loved and connected with as a young girl.
You don’t have any Beach Boys songs on here. But you have a big Brian Wilson connection — you sang on the Beach Boys tribute special a few years ago, and you paid tribute to him when he died. Was it too obvious, or too difficult, to include one of those?
I think it’s too difficult. In my experience, covering different artists, like with the Bee Gees, for instance — and Crowded House is another one — their chord progressions are so strange, and it’s a certain sound that it’s really hard to replicate, or even to do well if you’re not gonna replicate it. So, for me, I think I got my nod to the Beach Boys in during “Never My Love” [a cover of a song by the Assocation], when I got to go crazy building the vocal arrangement.
I worked with with Brian Wilson on a couple of his albums; I sang backups and got to watch him work, and then he did the same thing for me, singing backgrounds on a song called “California” that I did on my album “A Woman and a Man.” So I would say that there was actually a nod to the Beach Boys on the album, but it would be impossible for me to cover a Beach Boys song. Impossible. I wouldn’t touch it.
Some of the songs on your album are very gentle, but then something like Burt Bacharach’s “Anyone Who had a Heart,” which was a hit for Dionne Warwick, is a song that you have to do some belting on to make it work.
It was really fun to sing because that’s not really something that I do. I love Bacharach and grew up hearing him on the radio all the time, or Dionne Warwick and whatnot. But, it was challenging, but it wasn’t that hard. I got to just have fun with it. I think the most challenging song for me on the album was probably “Everybody’s Talkin’.” That was the hardest one. Another song that was challenging for me was “If You Could Read My Mind” (by Gordon Lightfoot). That was kind of hard, too. But it was all fun. It wasn’t anything that was really challenging for me, to be honest.
Did any of the artists from that era stay on your personal playlist throughout the decades?
I think the one artist that I’ve listened to most consistently, even before I made the album, was probably Harry Nilsson, because I was such a big fan of him as an artist and songwriter. And I got to know him, because I used to go to my husband’s restaurant all the time and hold court every night.
The Hollies song you chose for the first single and video, “The Air That I Breathe,” is so melodically rich and unusual, the way the melody rises and falls and rises and falls until it gets to that big sustain that can only be answered by that memorable guitar lick. Was there a reason why that one jumped out at you as a single?
The way they do things (with singles) these days, I don’t quite understand, but they left it to me, and I loved the way that song turned out. When we were recording it. I really wanted to build the choruses and make it anthemic. It is a weird song, and the chord progressions really are strange in that song. And there’s a darkness to it that I like. But since they let me pick it, I just picked that because it seemed kind of like something that was similar to other things I’ve done. Like, I guess Belinda… I don’t like talking about myself in the third person, but it was very Belinda, I guess, if there’s a signature sound.
Any way to identify what the Belinda sound is?
It’s like lush choruses, sort of anthemic, romantic… (“The Air That I Breathe”) kind of reminds me in some ways, and I don’t know if you even know the song, but a song I did called “Summer Rain,” which is very me, but also there’s a melancholy kind of twist to it.
In a statement you released about the album, you talked about how there’s a California that doesn’t exist anymore and it reminds you of something more innocent. It’s interesting to think about what the California dream represents to people, partly because of Brian Wilson passing, but then also just because of people hating on California lately and some MAGA folks saying Los Angeles is a cesspool.
It’s not the same. It’s different. I still go back there and sometimes if I have time, I’ll make a trip up to Thousand Oaks and go over the hill to the area north of Malibu where my boyfriend used to surf all the time, that big dune that goes up the side of the mountain. There’s still a magic there. A couple years ago, I drove from Reno over to Modesto, believe it or not. We went through that whole area where it’s just so majestic with the mountains and the pines, and it was like, this is like the California of my dreams. Once in a while something will sort of evoke those feelings of the California of old, and north of Malibu has that still, a little bit. It’s the way the sun shines.
I remember my parents used to get all the kids in the station wagon and drive through Laurel Canyon, and then they would go by Frank Zappa’s log cabin and my dad would go, “Oh, look at those hippies,” and I would think, “Oh, they’re so cool. One day I wanna be just like that.” And then I got to be a punk (instead). In retrospect, I can’t believe how close those things were. It was ‘72 (toward the end of the counterculture movement), and then ‘77 was when the punk scene really started happening with Slash magazine. There were like 50 kids — like, 50 of us — and then it exploded. But it was right on the back of the Laurel Canyon thing.
There were a few of us who liked both the Eagles and X during those transitional years, but mostly people were picking one wave and not all of them.
California radio started changing when I was in high school, like a sophomore, junior or senior, which is when it went from the kind of pop that’s on this album to music that I appreciate now but I did not like then. I did not like the Doobie Brothers or the Eagles or any of that. And then of course, in art class I discovered Iggy and Roxy Music and all that and it was like, oh my God. But that was when radio sort of went the way of Seals and Crofts and America and all that, which was OK.
Looking at the cover photo…
I was afraid that people would think it was the red sky from the fires. I was like, no, no, no, no, no! I hope you didn’t think that.
No, no, Actually, it feels reminiscent of a vintage Norman Seeff-photographed cover from back in the day. It seemed like he always would be having covers outdoors with a brightly lit singer in the foreground, as if they were lit up by headlights or something, and a sunset in the background.
Actually, that’s a really good reference, because I haven’t heard that name in years and years, but he was the man of the moment in California in the ‘70s and early ‘80s. And wasn’t his partner Taryn Power, who is Tyrone Power’s daughter? He was great. And it is kind of like that. That was actually from a photo session I did a couple of years ago. And the album cover was totally different. And then John Stapleton, the art director, just played with the photo session and superimposed the beach and stuff in the background. So it’s not really a beach.
So we can just pretend you tromped down to the beach at night in your best dress and plopped yourself in the sand at night.
Yeah, exactly.
There is some consistency to some of your recent fashion. The sparkly dress you arewearing in that photo reminds me of the sparkly top you were wearing at Coachella.
Yeah, one’s a top and one’s a dress. Same. It’s the same designer (Rachel Oroczog). It’s my oldest best friend — she has a clothing line, so she sort of helped me this time to make an effort for Coachella and all the Go-Go’s stuff, and then she did the dress for the album cover.
Producer Gabe Lopez is somebody who worked with you on your last complete solo album.
He did, which was “Wilder Shores,” the Sanskrit chanting album that I did. He was a friend of my son’s that I met and he is probably about 25 years younger than me. So a few of these songs on the album, he didn’t even know. But he had the same sort of pop sensibility, and it was fun showing him these songs that he’d never heard of. But we work really well together — same sensibilities.
It was fun for everyone seeing you back with the Go-Go’s at Coachella and Cruel World and a few isolated California dates. When we last talked a couple years ago, you made it sound like the Go-Go’s were very much in the past for you. You sakid then the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction put a nice cap on things. Does it just ends up being a never say never situation?
Always. I mean, we don’t have any plans to do anything. And the only reason why we really got back to the Go-Go’s to play is because of the Coachella offer. We thought that’s something you don’t turn down, because it’s pretty amazing for the legacy of the band. So we said yeah, and we put some shows around it. I can’t say never because I’ve been proved wrong so many times, saying “never again.” But I don’t see… There’s nothing planned at all. You know, we don’t have any management. Everybody has their own lives. We live in different parts of the world. It’s very hard for everybody to get together now. So we’ll see. But like I said, I can never say never with it as far as the Go-Go’s go.
If these did end up being the last shows you would ever do, at least you had all five of you back on stage at once, which hadn’t been the case with Gina Schock being out from an injury on the last mini-tour, replaced for that stint with Clem Burke (who died earlier this year). Other members had been out for various reasons in various reunions before that.
Exactly — we had Gina. And, you know, Clem was amazing. It was so much fun singing with him singing in the background. But it was great having Gina back and she hadn’t played with the band since I think 2018. So it’d been a long time. It went really well. It couldn’t have gone any better, actually. Not at all.
You have a short solo tour in England, I think. Do you foresee doing a tour in the States?
I don’t have anything planned. I mean, I probably will. I do have some dates at the end of the year on the east coast, andI will probably do some west coast stuff stuff next year. But I don’t know. I mean, it’s for the first time in my life when I don’t really have anything for next year at all in the books. Not that I can’t, because if I wanted to, I could definitely have that. But I like being home. I like not living out of a suitcase. and I’ve been on the road pretty much since I was 19, 20 years old. So, it’s kind of nice. I’m having this life where I’m actually home and able to go to weddings and other events. I never really got to do that. I missed out on normal stuff for a long time, so it’s kind of nice being doing normal things again.
You still have your animal activism, including a benefit coming up.
I have my charity and project that I co-founded in 2014. We started in India, we expanded into Thailand, and 100,000 animals later, it’s like the most successful animal NGO in the state of Bengal in India. We’re expanding into Mexico now, and we’re now filing the paperwork for my donkey sanctuary. It’s probably breaking ground in about six months. And that’s kind of my baby.
So that’s a dream of yours for a while.
Yeah, totally. I’ve always wanted to have a donkey sanctuary. Always, always, always. For years and years I’ve always talked about it and I just put it out there. I thought somebody’s gonna come along, and I don’t know how, but it’ll happen, and I just forgot about it. And then all these weird coincidences happened, so now, yeah, near San Miguel.
Just to tie things together musically, where do your interests most lie now? It was so much fun for fans seeing you reconnect with that punky spirit with the Go-Go’s, even doing some of those early songs that have been forgotten. And then here you’re feeling just as comfortable covering the Carpenters obviously. And you’ve taken some detours with the chant stuff and the French stuff. What touches you in your soul musically now?
Right now I listen to a lot of devotional music, like Hindu chants. I listen to a lot of chanting, Sikh chanting. I love that, because it’s powerful. But I mean, I love Yungblood, because he’s unapologetically a rock star, and I think music really misses that. I can’t remember the last time we had an amazing, sexy rock star, and I think he ticks all the boxes, so I like him. Chappell Roan, of course, I like her. But mostly around the house and stuff, I listen to opera and like devotional music. And punk-rock. I still listen to the Clash, and I love Midnight Oil and I still listen to them. I have been going back to Wall of Voodoo. I mean, “Mexican Radio” — come on.
Speaking of Mexico… we know how much you love living there. So are you going to do a sequel to “Once Upon a Time in California” someday and make it… “Once Upon a Time in Mexico”?
I know! You know something? I mean, actually, I was working on something with this producer here (in Mexico), and I got so busy, I just sort of forgot about it, but who knows? It might be like another voila — just classic songs of Mexico without doing any cultural appropriation. That’s the thing. But I love mariachi music and I love a lot of the artists here.