Belinda Carlisle retains her punk spirit as solo artist

Belinda Carlisle must be twisting the truth when she sings that a vacation is "all I ever wanted" because she has barely had a breather since bursting onto the scene with the wildly successful pop group The Go-Go's in the '80s and launching a solo career in the same decade.

Catching up with her even now finds Carlisle in an airport, minutes away from boarding a plane to embark on a new tour to promote a just-released collection of her solo singles from 1986 to 2014. The massive 28-CD box set highlights a total of 29 hits and more than 100 B-sides, special cuts and other exclusives.

It all sounds pretty exhausting, but not to her.

"I look at it and it seems like a big blur," Carlisle jokes, before conceding, "It has been a lot of work. But it didn't seem like it at the time, especially when you love what you do."

The collection features some of the songs most meaningful to Carlisle - "Mad About You," her first single after leaving behind The Go-Go's; "Heaven Is a Place on Earth," her first number-one solo hit; and "Summer Rain," her personal favorite for its artistic merit.

"I'm very blessed to have had such a long career and this amazing back catalog that allows me work to this day," she says, alluding to the latest tour that brings her back to the Arcada Theatre in St. Charles on Sept. 9.

But it wasn't always all roses for Carlisle, especially at the peak of her career in the mid-1980s as growing band strife and drug addictions disturbed the early harmony that made The Go-Go's one of the most successful pop groups of all time. Carlisle co-founded the band in Hollywood in 1978 after a brief stint as a drummer in the punk rock group Germs. Though she switched to vocal duties in The Go-Go's, her iconic, ebullient voice on songs like "We Got the Beat" and "Our Lips Our Sealed" made the 1981 debut "Beauty And The Beat" a record-breaking platinum success and an album that many consider a cornerstone of the decade's new wave scene. Yet just four years later, The Go-Go's stopped for good.

"The breakup was emotional and upsetting," Carlisle admits. To cope, she threw herself right back into work, laying down tracks that would become her well-received 1986 eponymous solo debut. "Singing is the only thing I know how to do. I always knew that if I did leave The Go-Go's that I would always have that opportunity," she says, though adamant it's not the reason the band broke up.

In the years since, members of The Go-Go's seemed to have mended relations and have performed a handful of reunion tours, including one final one planned for the summer of 2016. "It will be our last tour. It has to come to an end at some point," Carlisle says firmly.

She admits, however, the experience will continue to be a part of her life, including performing the band's hits at her concerts. "It's my roots," she says.

She also holds on to the punk rock spirit that was distilled in her and continues to inspire the charity work she has taken on over the years, including advocating for LGBTQ and animal rights.

In the fall, Carlisle and her husband (politician and filmmaker Morgan Mason) will move from their adopted home in France to Asia where she can be closer to the ground work of the Animal People Alliance she co-founded in Calcutta, a city she fell in love with after finding Kundalini yoga to be self-therapy as she got sober. Next year she will also release a pop album with some of the recorded mantras, and vows to not make "traditional" music again.

"I think it's a natural thing when you're my age to think what kind of mark you want to leave on the planet. Besides being a singer I certainly want to give back," she says. "I may not look like a punk rocker, but I still have a lot of punk rock in my heart."