Right after I finished the audiobook of Kathy Valentine's memoir of her time with The Go-Go's, I started the one by Go-Go's singer Belinda Carlisle. 

In a lot of ways, the books told the same story: A girl from a troubled broken home finds her identity and a sense of family through music; youth and the pressures of fame drive her into addiction; she gets clean and writes a book in a spirit of gratitude and reconciliation. The main events are all the same, up to a point: the band's formation, the three albums, burn-out and acrimony on the road, the final shows in Brazil with a new guitarist, the breakup, the reunions. Belinda had a more prolific solo career, and recorded more albums than I realized, finding success especially in Europe.

 
But while Kathy was an Austin rock chick from the beginning, Belinda is more...Hollywood. She marries the son of a famous Hollywood couple, and is wowed by the extravagant gifts he buys her. She talks her way into buying a historic storybook-style LA home. She jets back and forth between a home in the south of France and recording in California like other people commute. She records an album of songs all in French, called "Voilá". She narrates the audiobook herself, and more than once I found myself thinking of Moira Rose from Schitt's Creek. 

Belinda ends up clean and sober, a member of AA and a yoga ashram, but it does take her a very long time, until quite late in her life, and the upteenth time she describes her husband reacting to her falling off the rails saying that's it, he's fed up, he can't do this any more, we nearly feel the same way. But he sticks around, maybe because, like us, he remembers the champagne-bubble joy this woman brought to us from the first time we saw her, kicking up the water in a fountain and flashing a beaming smile.