‘Head Over Heels’ Musical: Hear New Rendition of Go-Go’s Song ‘This Town’

Head Over Heels, the Broadway musical currently playing at the Hudson Theatre in New York City, is based on a 16th-century prose poem of mistaken identity and jealous lovers that was later turned into a play, The Arcadia. But everyone really knows it as “the Go-Go’s musical” since the upbeat production features all the hits from the pioneering all-female group. It’s one of those meta-mashups that can take some time to get into but, once you do, there’s plenty of fun times to be had while upending the patriarchy. (Plus, it also features RuPaul’s Drag Race favorite Peppermint as Pythio, the Oracle of Delphi, in a rollicking number.)

Now fans can enjoy the reinterpretation of the songs with the release of the Head Over Heels original cast recording. And that means more music for Go-Go’s fans since the album includes an exclusive new recording of “This Town,” by Charlotte Caffey, Belinda Carlisle, Gina Schock, Kathy Valentine and Jane Wiedlin. Co-written by Caffey and Wiedlin, the track is being touted as their first studio recording in more than 17 years, since their 2000 album, God Bless the Go-Go’s.

“The song is a fan favorite when we play live shows,” Caffey tells Rolling Stone. “The whole audience sings along with us on the chorus: ‘This Town is our town/It is so glamorous/Bet you’d live here if you could/And be one of us.'”

Jane Wiedlin explains it was her and Caffey’s love of the Kinks that inspired the song. “By 1979, Charlotte and I had become a songwriting team and we wanted to write about Hollywood, the epicenter of the L.A. Seventies punk scene,” she says. “I turned to the Ray Davies opus ‘Celluloid Heroes’ for lyrical inspiration. I wanted to take the glamorous ‘movie star’ years that Davies had written about and update it to Seventies Hollywood, which had turned beyond dishabille. For a teenager who had grown up in the squeaky-clean San Fernando Valley, the tawdry and slightly-scary Hollywood was a revelation.”

The entire Head Over Heels album is now available digitally. Physical formats will be released on November 9th. An in-store performance and album-signing event by the cast is scheduled for November 12th at New York City’s Drama Book Shop.