After initiating one of the most successful publicity juggernauts of the decade, Boy George had a hard time adjusting to the consequences of fame. The bitter Waking Up with the House on Fire, Culture Club's third album, was followed by the disastrous From Luxury to Heartache and by news of George's heroin addiction. But in the crackling title track that starts his first solo album, George declares, "I'm not a factory about to be shut down." And indeed, as evidence of his recovery, Sold is as convincing as a clean urine sample.

The continuity between the music of Culture Club and Sold is established by the album's blithe, light-soul songs. Four of the eleven tracks were written with Motown songwriting titan Lamont Dozier, which is appropriate, since Culture Club borrowed so much from the Sound of Young America. The young British musicians George picked for the sessions, among them the funk duo Well Red, share a dramatic sensibility, which is framed well by the production of Stewart Levine (Simply Red).

And while Sold is as enjoyable as any Culture Club LP, it's also more compelling. It may be too tempting to read the songs' lyrics as autobiography, but even the slightest among George's songs ("I Asked for Love" and "Keep Me in Mind") underline the album's concern with memories and regrets, a theme that certainly seems to refer to his problems. Even the campiness of "Little Ghost," which features a "freaky boy" with "red eyes and red lips," evokes the neo-glam decadence of the Blitz club, where George first posed, although his efforts at adopting a creepy baritone sound more like Meat Loaf than like Bowie.

If Sold isn't bluntly autobiographical, it's at least obliquely so, as in the cover of Bread's "Everything I Own," which is the album's first single as well as its emotional center. With a reggae-in-flected arrangement similar to that used by Ken Boothe in 1974 (on a single that was a Number One hit in Britain), George murmurs, "I would give everything I own/Just to have you back again." Whether he's singing about his health, his innocence or a past lover, the choice of such a classical, antiquated ballad implies a lot about the power of pop music: having begun to recover from heroin addiction, George has evidently found strength in the simple truths that constitute pop-music clichés.

Whereas Culture Club LPs often seemed to be collections of hit singles, Sold is impressive because it works as an album. Throughout the record there's a sense of struggle that culminates in the prayerful ballad "To Be Reborn." Despite the caustic suggestions about stardom that connect the title track to the album's cynical cover art, George is clearly thrilled to be back among the living, and that thankfulness is reflected in the hopeful mood of his musical return. (RS 506)

ROB TANNENBAUM