Boy George’s haunting ballad “Il Adore” provided a heartbreaking soundtrack to the AIDS epidemic
Boy George released his fifth studio album Cheapness and Beauty. Though only a moderate commercial success, the album was an important one in his career because it marked the first time he sang very openly about being gay, despite having come out publicly to Barbara Walters a decade earlier.The lead single was a cover version of Iggy Pop and David Bowie’s 1977 bop “Funtime.” For the second single, Boy George released “Il Adore.” Originally titled “Stevie,” he wrote the song following the death of his childhood friend, who passed away from an AIDS-related illness.Subscribe to our newsletter for your front-row seat to all things entertainment with a sprinkle of everything else queer.The song opens with the heartbreaking scene of a mother holding her adult son in her arms as he lay dying in a hospital bed:“Mother clutches the head of her dying son / Anger and tears, so many things to feel / Sensitive boy, good with his hands / No one mentions the unmentionable, but everybody understands / Here in this cold white room / Tied up to these machines / It’s hard to imagine him as he used to be.”In 1994, the singer told POZ magazine he began writing “Il Adore” when Stevie was in the hospital. “It’s really about when Stevie was dying, being in the hospital with his family and his friends–really about the two different sides of Stevie, if you like: How his parents saw him and how we saw him.
It was hard to imagine him as he used to be.”“It was really just my experience of Stevie’s death. I’ve known other people who have died, but I suppose Stevie was someone I knew the longest.”He went on to explain that, while the song was about the stigma surrounding HIV/AIDS, it was also about how a person chooses to respond when they know they are dying.“Behind AIDS I think there’s a lot of guilt,” he said. “I think that with gay people, because we’re persecuted to a certain degree all our lives, we’re made to feel as though we don’t belong.
