Boy George thinks he was "boring" when he was "out of control."
The 54-year-old singer – who has been sober eight years following his 15-month jail sentence in January 2009 – thinks his priorities and goals in life have shifted over the years.
George – whose full name is George Alan O’Dowd – said: "I’m a very different person so what I write about is very different, I’m a lot more private then I used to be. I guess I’m a bit more protective of my privacy than I used to be when I was younger.
"And I think it’s good to have things that are private, it’s important, it keeps you sane. One of the things that I learned in recovery is that I need boundaries with myself. And equally I need boundaries with other people and I think that’s an age thing.
"That’s not me being boring I think the other ways more boring, to be out of control is far more boring especially for everyone else."
And it’s not just his personal life that has altered since he ditched the booze as the ‘Voice’ judge has admitted he can’t bring himself to sing some of his old classics anymore.
Speaking on BBC Radio 2’s ‘The Art of Artists’ on Monday (14.03.16), he said: "Some songs you grow into, some songs you grow away from. ‘Do You Really Want to Hurt Me’ still resonates as a song for me now when I perform it but it’s a very different song for me now.
"It means different things, but when I was first writing that stuff I was very ‘oh woe is me’. Not as a person but in my heart, I felt rejected and you know like no one loves me, but then again on the surface I was impossible to love so, there comes another contradiction."