Church of the Poison Mind

Released in 1983 as the lead single from Colour by Numbers, it reached number two in the UK, held off the top by David Bowie's Let's Dance. It was also the band's fourth top ten hit in both Canada and the US. In the US it was still climbing when Epic released Karma Chameleon ahead of schedule, and it peaked the week Karma Chameleon first entered the chart.

The song took strong influence from Stevie Wonder's Uptight (Everything's Alright), and Helen Terry sang backing vocals. AllMusic's Stewart Mason called her chorus a pop-song masterstroke. In the UK the B-side was Man Shake, and in the US it was Mystery Boy. NME ranked it eighth among the tracks of 1983, and in 2017 Billboard put it first on a ranking of Culture Club songs. Asked in a 1984 Rolling Stone interview which church he belonged to, Bob Dylan joked that it was the Church of the Poison Mind.