Go-Go's Singer Poses Nude for Playboy

May 16, 2001 -- The Go-Go's drew some criticism from Catholic groups for posing as the Virgin Mary on the cover of God Bless the Go-Go's and the band Web site. Perhaps that indignation contributed to singer Belinda Carlisle's decision to pose with no kind of costume at all.

The all-female rock group's leader told ABC's Good Morning America that she will appear in the August issue of Playboy magazine.

"It's sort of an homage to the sort of Vargas style, '50s pinup," the 42-year-old singer told the television program. "You don't have to be age 20 and size zero to be … sexually viable or viable as a woman. And that's part of the point that I would like or we all like to prove, anyway."

God Bless the Go-Go's, the band's first album since 1984, hit stores yesterday. The band scored big hits in the early '80s with "We Got the Beat" and "Our Lips Are Sealed," and Carlisle also led a successful solo career, with soft rock hits like "Heaven Is a Place on Earth" and "I Get Weak."

The new album's first single, "Unforgiven," a collaboration with Green Day's Billie Joe Armstrong, is at No. 25 on the Radio & Records Hot Adult Contemporary airplay chart.