Belinda Carlisle Album: “Live Your Life Be Free”

I know having written this in 2004 it seems unfair to call this the best Belinda of all, but that is just what it is. She brought a maturity and an adult feel to the songs that she lacked with her first 3 solo albums. All the songs here contain what i call the Belinda Carlisle Chorus: The backup singers that explode on the chorus of the songs. I Plead Insanity is by far the best song that Belinda has ever done. Its catchy..has the vocals..and the dance feel behind it, and I am sure if it had been released that this album would have gone MUCH farther than it did. If you like Belinda you will LOVE this album, if you can find it now.

This 1991 effort was largely ignored in the U.S for inexplicable reasons. Belinda announced she was pregnant and cancelled tours for this album. She did however make appearances on American TV talk shows such as Letterman and Arsenio Hall. The record is decidely more dance oriented than past albums. Her vocals are rich and tightly wrapped in an impressive wall of music. The anthemic "Live Your Life Be Free" is often used to open current concerts. What a great message!! "Do You Feel Like I Feel?" was another single from this CD. The most underrated single from this CD is the ballad "Half The World". Belinda's vioce is well suited for this dreamy song. This is a great record that should also be picked up by dance clubs. As recently as December 2008 I heard a remixed "Live Your Life Be Free" in a Chicago dance club.

This album is nothing short of amazing. I rarely like a cd as a wholw but this was it for me. Every song is perfection and that is really hard to come by this day in age. I especially liked the songs, I Plead Insanity, Little Black Book, Love Revolution, and Do You Feel Like I Feel. Very Highly Recommended!

This is Belinda's fourth album and quite different from her first three solo albums. It is in general harder and livelier than her previous ones and quite an optimistic album. One can feel that Belinda had quite some fun and joy during the making of this album.

Best Tracks on this album are "I Plead Insanity" (what a beat!), "Love Revolution", "Loneliness Game" (the softest song on the album, a reminder of her past) and the title track "Live Your Life Be Free".

The album contains 11 tracks with a total length of 51:09. Highly recommended.

Live Your Life Be Free is one of Belinda's top three best albums (right up there with her debut and "Heaven On Earth"). It's everything that Runaway Horses wasn't (which definitely isn't a downside). This album has much more of a Pop Rock vibe, while Runaway mostly had an overall slow, plodding dullness to it. The closest Runaway got to having a Rock song on it was "Leave a Light On". Don't get me wrong, it's a classic song and I love it, but it just doesn't have the punch that "Nothing Without me" and "I Plead Insanity" have. Only about half the songs I totally adore without any doubt (Live Your Life Be Free, Do You Feel Like I Feel, Half the World, You Came Out of Nowhere, You're Nothing Without Me, I Plead Insanity, Emotional Highway), the rest could be considered filler. But since half the album is amazing, I'm willing to forgive the mediocrity of the second half.