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The Go-Go's arrived in New York City in 1981 to start recording their debut album with producer Richard Gottehrer and engineer/co-producer Rob Freeman. According to Kathy Valentine in her memoir All I Ever Wanted, the duo 'made each of us feel important and essential to the record, treating every member with equal respect and listening to any ideas, opinions and concerns'.

They were given a budget of £40,000 for Beauty And The Beat, which was, Valentine has said, 'a modest amount for a signed group'. Yet they spent it all, and Gottehrer ended up using his own funds to finish the album. However, as Valentine also recalls, the band's impressions of the end product were

not positive at first. 'All of The Go-Go's assembled for a listening session at the IRS office. Track after track, we listened in frustrated despair.

'The live Go-Go's sounded raucous, full of attitude and energy, not wimpy and clean like this... Some tracks had been recorded too slow, so they had sped them up, making the vocals sound higher and thinner. "I sound like a chipmunk", Belinda said, disgusted... He had gone and turned us into a '60s lightweight watered-down pop group!'

Gottehrer later explained to NPR that he stood his ground with them. 'I said "Yeah, but isn't it good?!" Punk... was about being able to use the tools that you had without intrusion to express what you wanted to musically. I guess I intruded a bit, but I thought it was the right thing to do... In the end, they all loved it.'

Charlotte Caffey agrees: 'A few months later, when we finally got 'Our Lips Are Sealed' on the radio, then I understood, in that moment, what he was trying to achieve: People would listen to us.'