George Michael
At just over the age of 40, George Michael can look back on over 20 years as one of the top male stars in the music business although he has only taken part in the release of 7 proper studio albums in those two decades. First coming to prominence as part of the Bubblegum Pop duo Wham! in the early ’80’s, George Michael soon outgrew the constraints of the act and set out on his own. He reached phenomenal heights of success with his first solo album Faith. In the 17 years since, Michael has only released 3 studio albums but has scored a phenomenal 14 Top 10 Pop hits at home in the U.K. and, while less successful on the Pop charts in the U.S., he roared into 2004 with back to back #1 Dance hits in the U.S. George Michael has rarely been far from controversy in his career, but he has managed to maneuver his way around potential public relations catastrophes more successfully than any popular musician outside of Madonna.
In 1981 at the age of 18, George Michael, along with his school mate Andrew Ridgeley, formed a ska band named the Executives. It was not long before the two decided to pursue their dreams as a duo with the name Wham! They quickly signed a recording deal and released a first single Wham Rap! in 1982. It reached the charts in the U.K., but it was the followup Young Guns (Go For It) that landed in the U.K. Top 10 and nearly reached the Top 20 of the U.S. Dance chart. Bad Boys and Club Tropicana were additional U.K. Top 10 hits from their first album Fantastic, but the interest of U.S. audiences briefly dissipated. The 1984 single Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go broke through on the American Pop charts. By the end of the year it became Wham!’s first U.S. Pop #1 and provided the lead-in for the phenomenal success of their Make It Big album. Topping the Pop charts around the world in 1985, Wham! looked destined for a long, prosperous future. However, the release of the ballad Careless Whisper as a George Michael single focused the world’s attention and raised questions about Andrew Ridgeley’s role in the duo’s success. Wham! came to an abrupt end by the end of the year when the band’s manager Simon Napier-Bell decided to sell some of his financial stake in the duo to a South African firm. As part of a stance against the oppressive system of apartheid in South Africa, George Michael immediately dissolved Wham! The pair played an emotional final concert in front of 72,000 fans at London’s Wembley Stadium leaving fans in shock that Wham! was over in barely 3 years.
Hits continued to flow from already completed Wham! recordings including I’m Your Man and The Edge Of Heaven, but George Michael wasted little time in laying the foundation for a successful solo career. Trading on the esteem in the recording industry for his soulful voice, George Michael became the first white performer to record a duet with American ‘Queen Of Soul’ Aretha Franklin. Their single I Knew You Were Waiting (For Me), featuring sparkling production from Narada Michael Walden, soared to the top of Pop charts on both sides of the Atlantic in the spring of 1987. By the end of the year he had released his solo album Faith and dominance of the Pop music world was soon complete. This success did not come without controversy, however, as I Want Your Sex, the leadoff single for the Faith project, raised eyebrows with its provocative video. The video finally gained a playlist spot on MTV after it was reshot to ‘clarify’ that the video was meant to promote monogamy. Faith won the 1988 Grammy Award as Album of the Year, became the first #1 R&B album in the U.S. by a white artist, and ended up spawning 6 massive hit singles including Monkey, George Michael’s first #1 Dance hit.
While there were no heights yet to reach in terms of commercial success, George Michael was stung by the refusal of many in the music media to take his music seriously. He was frequently dismissed as a frivolous Pop musician. The 1990 album Listen Without Prejudice : Vol. 1 was designed to address these concerns. It was only partially successful. A number of critics gave him credit for the new tone and obvious influences from the Beatles, American R&B and Jazz. However, fans in the U.S. failed to respond positively to much of the album’s downbeat feel. It still managed to reach #1 on the U.K. album chart, but fewer songs stand up with George Michael’s best. The greatest attention for the project was grabbed by the music video accompanying the single Freedom ‘90. George Michael used the video to visually display a break from the past including the burning of the jacket worn in his Faith video from 1987. The video also starred supermodels Cindy Crawford, Naomi Campbell, Christy Turlington and Linda Evangelista.
The early ’90’s were a time of personal and professional turmoil for George Michael. The AIDS epidemic touched his personal life with the untimely death of Brazilian lover Anselmo Feleppa. George Michael recorded music for the Red, Hot and Dance charity album to help combat AIDS in 1992. His contributions included the Pop and Dance hit Too Funky. He also performed at the Wembley Stadium Freddy Mercury Tribute Concert in 1992. In 1993 George Michael took his record company Sony Music Entertainment to court claiming they did not adequately support his artistic development. The judge found in favor of the record company and, consequently, no studio albums were forthcoming until he could sign a new contract with Virgin in 1996. A number of charity concert appearances kept him in the public spotlight for much of the time, and the next album Older, released in May 1996, delves even deeper in the ’serious’ direction of Listen Without Prejudice. Sales remained strong in the U.K. but slipped badly in the U.S. While Pop acceptance waned in the U.S., a 1997 club mix of Star People, a track from Older, brought George Michael his second #1 Dance hit in the U.S.
Much of George Michael’s personal and professional difficulties seemed behind him as 1998 began, but in April an arrest for indecent exposure in Beverly Hills brought unprecedented tabloid exposure. He responded by, for the first time, publicly speaking about his life as a gay man. Toward the end of the year he released a single, Outside, that responded to the circus surrounding the arrest. Outside was another major hit in the U.K. and reached #3 on the U.S. Dance chart, but Pop radio in the U.S., allergic to controversy, ignored the song. In a radical change of direction, George Michael recorded Songs From the Last Century, an album of covers performed mostly in a jazzy lounge style, that appeared at the end of 1999. Commercial and critical acclaim were muted and his career seemed somewhat adrift. In 2002 the singles Freeek! and Shoot the Dog, swipes at the Internet sex industry and the Iraq policy of Tony Blair and George Bush, respectively, kept George Michael in the headlines and near the top of U.K. charts. The accompanying videos, frank and explicit, fanned the controversy. Musically, both were aggressive efforts to incorporate contemporary Dance music sounds and technology into Michael’s repertoire. George Michael’s latest album Patience finally appeared in 2004, 8 years after Older, his most recent collection of new songs. It is an intensely personal collection that was nearly ignored by U.S. Pop audiences, but in the U.K. the album quickly rose to the top of the charts. U.S. Dance DJ’s responded very positively to the first two singles Amazing and Flawless (Go To the City), which became George Michael’s 3rd and 4th #1 Dance hits. As the year ended, George Michael received 2 Grammy nominations for material from Patience.
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