Talk:Karma Chameleon

Untitled

What key is the harmonica of this song in? -thanks — Preceding unsigned comment added by 165.123.129.86 (talk) 22:28, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

Mild US bias

Song by a British band that reached number 1 in both UK and US... so why does the lead mention the US first? Not serious enough for me to bother to change, but I do think that in general songs with an equal(ish) degree of success in a band's home country and another should mention the home country first, unless there's a very important reason otherwise. 86.132.138.201 00:36, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

me too.--Timtak 13:30, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

Red Gold Green

The colors of most of the flags of Africa and representative of African freedom from colonization. Perhaps the message went well with the 1870s setting. --208.254.174.148 22:54, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

Succession box

The succession box is needed for people who are browsing through all of the #1 hits for their country for 1984. It was removed in this edit; I have restored it. Samboy (talk) 00:09, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

To address the concerns raised when deleting the entire box, I’ve removed most of the countries where it hit #1, leaving only the US, UK, and the fact it was #1 in UK for all of 1983. Yeah, I wasn’t wild about the song either but it did hit #1 and I don’t like seeing the succession box chain broken. Samboy (talk) 02:59, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

Kama or Karma?

Kama (sanskrit काम ) means lust or sex (or sometimes love) - it is the equivalent of Cupid in Indian mythology. Karma (sanskrit कर्म ) means action and typically in the west means fate. Clearly Boy George is a Kama Chameleon not a Karma Chameleon - Karma Chameleon makes no sense - boy George's sexual ambiguity makes it very clear. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 124.78.240.73 (talk) 13:21, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

This sounds like original research. Samboy (talk) 14:04, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

The song is about Karma, Boy George explained this in an interview to Robert Hilburn of the Los Angeles Times:

"It's so stupid when people say that the song isn't about anything. It's about this terrible fear of alienation that people have, the fear of standing up for one thing. It's about trying to suck up yo everybody, 'Oh yes, I agree with you.' What we're trying saying in the song is, if you aren't true, if you don't act like you feel, then you get karma-justice."

This is from the Billboard Book of Number 1 Hits, by Fred Bronson, Billboard Books, page 583.

Just because Boy George said the song was about "fear of alienation" doesn't mean that that is the truth - he may have simply been saying that in order not to offend some of his fan base. I mean, the lyrics make it clear that he is talking about a gay man who cannot commit because he hasn't fully accepted that he is gay, thus for example "a man without conviction". I think Boy George's explanation is hilarious. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.105.99.235 (talk) 09:41, 16 September 2014 (UTC)

It says in the body of the article that originally the title had been "Cameo Chameleon", alluding to a style of ornamental stone-carving wherein a stone of one colour is cut so as to reveal a second layer which is of another colour. Usually, this is a white stone which recedes from and displays a raised (or relief) portion in black or a dark colour, thereby creating a contrast. As a piece of jewellery, small brooches of this kind (known from antiquity) show a dark head in profile; although the tones could counterchange the other way, too (i.e., a black stone with a white image in relief).

Also mentioned in the lyrics are red, gold and green: these are often cited as the colours of Pan African unity, e.g., they appear on the flag of Ethiopia.

This is where we would venture into OR were any of this to enter the article. However, restricting ourselves to the Talk page, we might proceed with intelligent conjecture. These lyrics suggest a person who is of Black and Afro-Caribbean heritage; and, perhaps owing to his culture, (which has been historically intolerant of LGBT people and relationships), and perhaps also his sexuality (Bisexual men are proverbial in being reticent to acknowledge their orientation) is reluctant to go public with his relationship with the songwriter, a gay man. He, in a manner of speaking, "changes his colours" (like a chameleon), from his "true colours" back to his cultural origins.

Who this individual might be is also a matter for conjecture; but not, alas, within the scope of this Talk page.

Nuttyskin (talk) 14:27, 6 June 2025 (UTC)

Equally, it could be kamma, which is the Pali equivalent of the Sanskrit karma. This is something I have spent far too much time thinking about. Mozartnut (talk) 22:22, 24 January 2026 (UTC)

Music video

I saw it just now, and it includes some women in outfits that would have been considered positively indecent in "Mississippi 1870" (except maybe circus performers while performing), but it did not include any "James Bond gunbarrel sequence"... AnonMoos (talk) 02:38, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

Just now figured out the source of that person's confusion -- the "Church of the Poison Mind" music video shows various people seen through an opened camera iris / shutter taking flashbulb snapshots. It's somewhat James Bond influenced (but does not include any gunbarrel)... AnonMoos (talk) 12:39, 21 August 2016 (UTC)

Meme

Would it make sense to reference the "comma comma comma comma comma Chameleon meme" in this article?--117.128.169.94 (talk) 23:26, 4 September 2013 (UTC)

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