As we count down the final days of this trying year, something that has kept our spirits up in times like this has been the power of music, whether it's the big chart-topping hits that will make up the 2020 soundtrack, or the holiday songs that's playing everywhere right now as inch towards Christmas come next week. It's in that spirit that this weekend, DCBLOG proudly presents this ExtraTime Music Doubleheader featuring two rookies from the two seasons of MTV's The Challenge that have aired this year to give us something to think about for an hour & half other than the panic in this crazy world.
Ask anyone who has done the fifth major pro sport over the years and perhaps there is no feeling that is humbling than being the one who is chosen to go into the season's first elimination -- or in a few cases of late, the opening purge -- and falling short in that first one knowing you really didn't get a chance to prove yourself. It's most especially true when this happens to those who are competing for the first time on the show, knowing that the vets often have the upper hand and want to take care of the newbies first before they after each other when the business gets serious and the number of players thin out.
Season 35 of Total Madness earlier this spring provided us with the latest example of this hard reality: Asaf Goren added The Challenge to a solid reality TV resume that included Are You The One? Season 4 and its Second Chances spinoff, So You Think You Can Dance and Worst Cooks in America here in the U.S., and local versions of Big Brother and Ninja Warrior in his native Israel. But as is always the case, he was put into that first battle to face former Survivor castaway and Ex On The Beach alum Jay Starrett in the first elimination, and so began Mr. Loco's phenomenal rookie season.
Still, Asaf is a true jack of all trades who, as we wrote on here a few years ago, is more than just a global reality star: he's not only a son who loves his family so much, but also a dancer, a model and a musician. It's in the ladder that brings us to another chapter in his broadening CV: as MTV prepares to mark 40 years since "Video Killed The Radio Star" signed on the channel in the new year, earlier this month Asaf got to collaborate with one of pop's biggest icons in the MTV era... and it dates back to before he was even born.
Fueled by all those struggles, George found solstice in joining the 70's British pop culture movement known as the New Romantics: flamboyant fashion and music inspired by the glam rock era of the decade led by two of the U.K.'s greatest music stars, David Bowie and Duran Duran. And while living in various squats in Central London and spending many weekends at local nightclub Blitz, he would soon attract Sex Pistols manager Malcolm McLaren to try out performing with new wave band Bow Wow Wow. Only after leaving after problems with them did it set the stage for his incredible career.
And in 1982, their debut album Kissing to Be Clever debuted in the British Top 5, and their first three singles -- "Do You Really Want to Hurt Me?", "Time" and "I'll Tumble 4 Ya" -- topped both the British charts and reached top 10 in the U.S. That made them the first group since The Beatles to have their three singles from their debut album chart on our shores.
Culture Club's sophomore effort, Colour By Numbers, did just as good the following year: topping the charts at home and landing in the Top 5 of the Billboard 200. It included the group's signature song, "Karma Chameleon," which topped the singles charts in 16 countries, topped the American charts that fall, and by year's end was the #1 top-selling record of 1983 in the United Kingdom.
Two more singles, "Church of the Poison Mind" and "Move Away," would help Culture Club win three BRIT Awards and Best New Artist at the 1984 Grammys as they would be everywhere: MTV, pop radio, talk shows, magazines... you name it. It proved to be the very height of their popularity, as sales of their third and fourth studio albums would not match the big expectations of their predecessors.
He would emerge out of rehab and back into the spotlight with the first of many solo albums that did well in Europe but not in America due to legal orders not to travel across the pond due to ongoing drug litigation. George would eventually have several hits both here and abroad over the rest of a career that now spans over three decades as a musician, and who has also become a DJ starting when a club in the famous Piccadilly Circus district in London first asked him to mix records and then albums in the rave/house world. And soon, George took his talents to theatre as part of the London musical Taboo set in that New Romantic era, and he received a Tony Award nomination for his efforts. He's even been a judge on the UK and Australian versions of The Voice, as well as on The Celebrity Apprentice.
Because of his androgynous appearance in being described as partly male & female, there has always been talk about Boy George's sexuality. In interviews with Barbara Walters and Joan Rivers, he admitted to be bisexual in having had many boyfriends and girlfriends, but in his mid '90s memoir Take It Like A Man and two 2000's documentaries he classified himself as gay and added that he had secret flings with Culture Club members and others of both genders. Along with his battles with substance abuse, he lost keyboardist Michael Rudetsky and two other friends to drugs in the '80s... and George would find himself in further trouble with the law two decades later with two arrests on cocaine possession in New York and assault of a Norwegian model & male escort back home. But after starting to practice Nichiren Buddhism did he find that strength to finally become sober, and he has remained so ever since.
The music scene in the '80s was much different as MTV had just launched with videos 24/7 to broaden its weekly TV offerings beyond American Bandstand. Vinyl records were still as popular back then as it is now, car stereos transitioned over from 8-tracks to cassettes, CD's had yet to be introduced, and no one would envision the impact digital & streaming would have on the industry, which had so many more labels back then than it exists four decades later. And in 2020, music fans have had to grapple with having a whole year of concerts, festivals and tours wiped away by the COVID pandemic... and the only methods of seeing live music has been through television and live streaming events.
This Saturday night will see Boy George get together with two of his Culture Club bandmates -- Craig and Hay -- one more time as they will play in front of a specially invited and socially distanced crowd of 1,000 of their biggest fans at London's legendary Wembley Arena. Like so many of the small handful of concerts that have taken place in this lost year, everyone else will have a front-row seat at home to watch them perform on a livestream... something that for fans who are now four decades older will bring back those memories of living it up in the electrifying eighties. Hay told Newsweek earlier this week that their show will "...give people something special in these times. The other thing is just for us to get together, play again and enjoy being a band. I think it's going to be just great on so many levels to play live again, to see the guys get out, and have this thing go around the world. It's amazing."
Asaf told his country's largest newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth, "I was in LA a few months ago and there was some talk of collaboration, but there was nothing concrete. One morning I wake up and see that Boy George tagged me on Instagram, with a picture and a song of mine. After that I got a sketch of a song in an email and he wrote that it was the direction he wanted to go. When I sent him an initial sketch of my verse in English, he got back to me and said he also wanted a verse in Hebrew, that demand was entirely his own." And George recorded a video message saying to his fans, "Play it loud, play it proud and I look forward to being in Israel sometime soon and playing live. Shalom, peace and love!"
Below, the product of this collaboration between one of the biggest musical icons of the decade MTV was born, and one who's starred on three seasons of two of the channel's biggest reality franchises.
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Coming Up after our coverage of this week's episode of The Challenge Double Agents, the latest edition of Before They Were MTV Stars takes a look back at the golden moment that turned a local motocross star from the Lone Star State into an overnight viral sensation. And next week during the Christmas holiday, we'll join Asaf's fellow Are You The One? alumni as they reflect at some of the biggest moments from MTV's first entry into the current craze of modern reality dating television.
Stories like the one you've just seen is offered from DCBLOG's unique vantage point of ExtraTime: our way of focusing on the world of MTV Reality and those who are part of its legacy though original storytelling offering a different look at the people, the moments, the shows and the world of TV's most exciting reality programming. It's only a part of our look Inside MTV Reality, which has seen us cover every step of the entire AYTO journey, plus wall-to-wall Challenge coverage.
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