Do You Really Want to Hurt Me by Culture Club

Do You Really Want to Hurt Me is a 1982 ballad by the London band Culture Club, credited to all four members: Boy George, Mikey Craig, Roy Hay and Jon Moss. Steve Levine produced it, and Virgin Records released it in September 1982 as the third single from the debut album Kissing to Be Clever. It spent three weeks at number one in the UK that October, reached number two on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1983, and topped the charts in Canada, Australia and much of Europe.

Culture Club had no hits before it. Their first two Virgin singles, White Boy and I'm Afraid of Me, peaked at numbers 114 and 100 in Britain, outside the main chart. Boy George later told Q magazine that the third single was the band's last chance. He did not want it to be this song, because the lyrics were about his secret relationship with Moss, and he said he threatened to leave if the label put it out. Levine has said the band and Virgin felt strongly about the track, and the label went ahead.

The band wrote the song for a BBC Radio 1 session. Presenter Peter Powell asked Culture Club to record one for his show, and the band needed a third song to fill it. The soft reggae beat took shape in spare studio time at that session. Craig, the bassist, brought a Caribbean influence to the group, and his bass line was in place from the first pass with the drum machine. George wanted the lovers rock sound of the white-label reggae records sold at Dub Vendor, a ska and reggae shop in London, with a dub echo on his voice.

Levine first worked with the band in January 1982, making demos at Rondor Music's four-track studio in London. The demo of this song used a Roland CR-78 drum machine and a Korg Delta synthesizer set to an electric piano sound. The slow vocal opening was not part of it. The finished version was recorded at Red Bus Studios in London, where Moss played real drums over the drum machine part, and the CR-78 comes back in the last seconds of the fade.

The BBC session also shaped how the vocal was recorded. That format allowed three hours, with the vocal sung live alongside the band, and Levine kept the same approach at Red Bus. George sang in a padded corridor between the control room door and the live room, with a window so he could see the other players. His lead is one live take with no edits, and Levine added the dub echo as George sang. Levine has said the dead sound of the corridor and a reflection off the door account for much of how the voice sounds on the record. The vocal is not double-tracked. Helen Terry sang the backing parts, matching George's range, and her voice was stacked six times across the stereo field. The opening with Terry's vocals was recorded on its own and edited onto the front later.

Early reviews were mixed. Smash Hits called it watered-down reggae, while David Hamilton chose it as his record of the week on BBC Radio 2. Shakin' Stevens dropped out of an episode of Top of the Pops, and Culture Club got the slot the night before the broadcast. After that performance the single rose quickly, and Boy George's makeup and clothes became a tabloid story. George said the headlines asking whether he was a boy or a girl gave the song the publicity it needed. It ended 1982 as the fifth best-selling single of the year in Britain, with 882,440 copies sold.

In the United States and Canada it was Culture Club's first release, issued by Epic in November 1982. It entered the Billboard Hot 100 in December and held at number two for three weeks in March and April 1983, behind Michael Jackson's Billie Jean. It topped the Cash Box chart and reached number eight on the adult contemporary chart. The band won the Grammy for Best New Artist in 1984, and the song was nominated for Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group. Culture Club went on to score nine US top 40 hits in four years.

Julien Temple directed the video. It puts George on trial in a courtroom, filmed at Islington Town Hall, with flashbacks to a 1936 nightclub and a 1957 health club. Temple has said the song was about being gay and being punished for it. Some scenes showed jurors in blackface, and MTV in the US aired an edited cut with those shots removed.

In 2008 Boy George told Q that he and Moss dated in secret for about six years. In 2007 he had said the song was about all the men he was seeing at the time, not only Moss.

The song has been covered by Violent Femmes, who changed some of the lyrics, and by Adam Lambert. The German group Blue Lagoon took a dance version into the top 15 in Germany and Denmark in 2005. In the 1998 film The Wedding Singer, a band member named George, styled after Boy George, sings it twice. The key and BPM of Do You Really Want to Hurt Me are on its Song IQ page.