| High Hat | |
| Type: | compilation |
| Artist: | Boy George |
| Cover: | High Hat.jpg |
| Border: | yes |
| Released: | March 1989 (US) |
| Recorded: | 1988 |
| Genre: |
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| Length: | 51:32 |
| Label: | Virgin |
| Prev Title: | Boyfriend |
| Prev Year: | 1988 |
| Next Title: | The Martyr Mantras |
| Next Year: | 1991 |
High Hat is a 1989 album compiling tracks from Boy George's second and third UK and European solo albums, Tense Nervous Headache and Boyfriend.
Since neither Tense Nervous Headache or Boyfriend are any longer available, High Hat remains the only place to find any of Boy George's songs from 1988 to 1989. While High Hat has only ten tracks, the two other albums together included eighteen tracks: nine on the vinyl and twelve on the CD and cassette for Tense Nervous Headache; plus eight for Boyfriend, one of which (the hi-energy remix of "No Clause 28", also known as "Pascal Gabriel Mix") would later re-surface on Jesus Loves You's The Martyr Mantras album.
Tense Nervous Headache was shelved in the UK shortly after release of the first single due to lack of interest (or, as George put it in his autobiography,[1] after it "died a solitary death"), despite the singer getting to No. 1 in the UK Singles Chart the previous year with "Everything I Own". Half of the ten tracks on High Hat were quite unsuccessful singles either taken from Tense Nervous Headache or Boyfriend: "Don't Cry", "Whisper", "Don't Take My Mind on a Trip", "You Found Another Guy" and "Whether They Like It or Not".
The only track actually taken from High Hat as an independent single in the United States was the US remix of the opener "Don't Take My Mind on a Trip"; the version of which included on High Hat is slightly different from that originally opening Boyfriend. "Don't Take My Mind on a Trip" was a club hit in Canada and the US, charting at No. 5 on the Billboard R&B charts. "You Found Another Guy" reached number 31 on the Billboard Hot Black Singles Sales Chart on the 5th of August, 1989. A third single, "Whisper", was also released in the US in September 1989 and Boy George performed it live on the Arsenio Hall Show on September the 25th of that year. High Hat nonetheless did a little better than its US predecessor Sold, reaching number 126 on the Billboard charts on the 6th of May, 1989.[2] It was also released in Australia (V2555) and Mexico (LEMP-1640).
William Ruhlmann from AllMusic gave the album three out of five stars and wrote that while Boy George was in the band Culture Club, together they "scored surprising across-the-board success with a wild new fashion sense and old-fashioned pop-soul music", but "as a solo artist [he] seems determined to address a much smaller, more targeted audience". According to Ruhlmann, in the majority songs on the album, George "wants to engage in thinly veiled confessions set to new jack swing percussion tracks into which he nearly disappears".[3]
Tracks 2, 5, 7–10
Tracks 1, 3, 4, 6