#1414: Helen Terry

80s Snapshot:

• Number of songs on Hot 100: 1
• Highest peak position: 96
• Cumulative weeks on Hot 100: 3

Rarely credited in her own right, Helen Terry’s distinct voice was featured on several of the biggest hits of the 80s. Regrettably, that success as a backing vocalist never fully translated into solo stardom.

Though never an official member of the group, Helen Terry was an integral part of Culture Club’s sound, providing a husky and soulful counterpoint to Boy George’s lighter, airier lead vocals. Terry’s backing vocals were present throughout the group’s 1982 debut album Kissing To Be Clever, which saw Culture Club rise to global stardom with the huge hit “Do You Really Want To Hurt Me?”. The single “Time (Clock Of The Heart), a standalone single in the U.K. but included on the U.S. issue of the album, saw Terry not only sing on the track but also appear in the music video.

Her largest contribution to a Culture Club came on “Church Of The Poison Mind,” the lead single to the group’s 1983 sophomore album Colour By Numbers. Sharing lead vocals on the chorus with Boy George, Terry features much more prominently in the music video. The single reached #10 on the Billboard Hot 100 and #2 in the U.K., though ultimately it was overshadowed on the album by the global #1 status of “Karma Chameleon”.

Terry would provide backing vocals on all four of Culture Club’s albums in their initial 80s run, which saw the band score eight Top-10 hits in the U.K. and six on the Billboard Hot 100. Amidst this run, Terry’s backing vocals were also heard on “Take Me Home,” the final track on Phil Collins’s 1985 mega-smash No Jacket Required which made #7 on the Hot 100 in its own right.

Terry embarked on her solo career in the middle of her run with Culture Club, releasing a pair of singles in 1984. “Love Lies Lost,” co-written by Terry with her bandmates Boy George and Roy Hay, reached #34 on the U.K. charts; “Stuttering”, also written by Terry, made #84. Both of these singles were European releases and never reached U.S. shelves.

Her lone solo voyage to the Billboard Hot 100 would come in early 1986, when she was tapped to join Ray Parker Jr. on the duet “One Summer Day / Dueling Bikes”. The uptempo staccato-driven number, reminiscent of Elton John’s “I’m Still Standing”, was featured in the Kevin Bacon bicycle messenger thriller Quicksilver (specifically a scene featuring a bicycle tricks competition). “One Summer Day” debuted at #96 on the 2/15/1986 Hot 100 (Quicksilver opened on February 14), spent a 2nd week at that peak position, and fell to #100 in its third and final week on the chart. The relative box-office failure of Quicksilver (opening at #7 in the box office and making only $7M domestic) doomed the single to similarly underperform on the chart, even with Ray Parker Jr.’s previous successes with soundtrack tie-ins.

Terry recorded a full-length album Blue Notes for Virgin in 1986 and an EP Fortunate Fool for Parlophone in 1989, but neither of these projects garnered any commercial traction. Her relationship with Culture Club soured after Boy George made some incendiary remarks about her in his autobiography, and Terry was not a part of Culture Club’s reunion in the late 1990s. Instead, she pivoted her career to television, first working as a children’s TV researcher in the early 90s. She then combined both of her career paths into music television production, becoming the music producer for The BRIT Awards (one of the U.K.’s most prestigious award shows) in 2001. She was eventually promoted to executive producer of the ceremony, running the BRITs from 2005-10.

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