Karma Chameleon

Did You Know?

• The song won Best British Single at the 1984 Brit Awards.
• The United Australia Party created a parody called "Palmer Chameleon" for a mobile video game, which Boy George and Culture Club's manager said constituted copyright infringement.
• Cash Box described the song as having 'the air of an immediate Stateside hit'.

Background

Boy George has said the song addresses the fear of alienation and the pressure to please everyone, with the title referring to a form of cosmic justice for those who are not true to themselves. He wrote it while on holiday in Egypt, and the other band members were initially reluctant to record it because they thought it sounded like a country song. The group had earlier indicated in interviews that the next single would be called "Cameo Chameleon." The harmonica part was performed by Judd Lander, a former member of the 1960s Merseybeat group The Hideaways. The track is in the key of B major. In response to claims of plagiarism from singer-songwriter Jimmy Jones, Boy George stated that he might have heard Jones's song "Handy Man" once but did not deliberately copy it.

Other appearances

The song was performed as the finale of a 1986 episode of The A-Team titled "Cowboy George. It has been used in political advertising, including by Britain's Labour Party in 2006 for ads targeting Conservative leader David Cameron. BT featured the song in a 2002 UK television advertisement with a singing chameleon phone, which became popular enough to inspire a variant phone marketed in both the UK and US. It has also appeared in films such as Romy and Michele's High School Reunion, Rock Star, Scary Movie 4, The Call, Sex Tape, Ricky Stanicky, and Despicable Me 4, as well as the television series American Dad!.

Music video

The music video for this song was shot in 1983 at Desborough Island in Weybridge, with Peter Sinclair directing. It takes place in Mississippi during 1870 and features a large, multiracial crowd dressed in 19th-century outfits, some wearing red, gold, and green. Boy George appears in his classic look: a colorful costume, fingerless gloves, long braids, and a black bowler hat. A pickpocket and jewelry thief moves through the crowd stealing, then boards the riverboat The Chameleon with the band. Caught cheating at poker by dealing himself a royal flush, the thief is forced to return everything he stole and walk the plank, prodded by ladies' parasols, falling into the river. As evening falls, the party continues on the boat cruising downriver.