STACK #185 Mar 2020

MUSIC FEATURE

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George Michael

had developed a character for the outside world that wasn’t me, and I was having to deal with people all the time who thought I was [like that].” George was obviously discussing his Wham! image: bubblegum popstar modelling the shortest of Day-Glo shorts, frosty-blond highlights, a just-back-from-Beefa permatan and blindingly white teeth (long before porcelain veneers were even a thing) while bouncing about like a human swizzle stick doing aerobics. (Confession: One of 14-year-old Bryget’s VHS tapes containing music videos/interviews from Countdown etc. - remember desperately diving to press record the millisecond your current obsession/s appeared onscreen? - legit wore out at the tail end of Wham!’s Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go film clip, during the

Faith

Year 1987

Bryget Chrisfield explores a favourite record which spelled the lift-off to cultural stardom for an important act. This month: George Michael’s Faith .

‘saucy George’ section. Oh, you do SO know the bit I mean! “Cuddle up, baby, move in tight/ We’ll go dancing tomorrow night/ It’s cold out there, but it’s warm in bed...” - phwoar, that suggestive eye work!) After Wham! disbanded, George’s first release was I KnewYou Were Waiting (For Me) - a duet he recorded with Aretha

”T he last time we saw [George Michael] was at the London Olympics closing ceremony in 2012 and so that’s 30 years since we first

this scribe. Both PSB and George were amongst the jaw-droppingly awesome roster of talent assembled for A Symphony Of British Music and Tennant remembered the scene

met,” Neil Tennant, one half of Pet Shop Boys, shared during a recent interview conducted by

backstage was “a bit chaotic”. “We went to our dressing room and everyone was trying to chill out,” Tennant recounted, “and someone in the dressing room next door was playing music incredibly loudly. And I said to our tour manager, ‘Can you go next door and tell them to turn that music down?’ and he said, ‘Well, you know it’s George Michael,’ I said, ‘Well, can you still tell him to turn it down!?’ hahaha, and then the door flung open and George Michael came in and said, ‘Did you just tell me to turn my music down?’ And I said, ‘Yes I f---cking did!’ And he said, ‘Oh, give me a hug.’ And that was the last time I ever saw him.” When asked whether George acquiesced, Tennant chuckled, “Oh, actually, what he did was better than that! He had this big ghetto blaster and he went back into the dressing room and played West End Girls really loudly!” In Robert Steele’s biography, Careless Whispers: The Life & Career Of George Michael , George reflected on his post-Wham! headspace: “For a time I didn’t really want to get back into the music business when we finished Wham!. The problem was just that I

Franklin during the final days of Wham! - but it was I Want Your Sex - the lead single from his US Diamond-certified debut solo album, Faith - that heralded the arrival of George Mark 2 in spectacular fashion. The song’s instrumentation is beyond sexy with that bouncy synth riff, rhythmic cowbell and sassy brass. George’s “HURR!”s are more than enough to cause heart-rate spikes while sedentary but, by today’s standards, this song’s message is positively quaint. Probably the raciest lyrics see us questioning the spelling of the fifth word of this lyrical phrase: “I know we can come together...” I Want Your Sex initially caused a furore following concerns that it promoted promiscuity in the age of AIDS, with the BBC denying the single pre-watershed airplay and producer Trevor Dann scoffing, “You’ve got to be a tosser not to know that that’s going to happen. Write a lyric like that, it’s not going to be played on Radio 1.” But George is on about “one on one” rooting throughout I Want Your Sex ! “The most attractive form of sex you can promote is the idea of being totally in love with someone but wanting to rip their clothes off,” he protested. “It really wasn’t as throwaway

George’s “very, very heterosexual” Faith video look.

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MARCH 2020

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