George Michael R.I.P.

it's ridiculous and unfair that Michael Jackson, George Michael, Whitney Houston, and Prince are all dead.

Fucking hell.

Precious Box, y'all. All of Patience.

could prob spend the rest of my life thinking about the way he sings "amazing"

First, David Bowie and then Prince and now George Michael. 2016 cannot end soon enough.
RIP

RIP

Just gobsmacked. Damn.

Guys I'm so sad

I was just thinking the other week about how remarkable (especially in retrospect) "Father Figure" is as a combination of the music, the arrangement, the lyrics.

Last christmas indeed.

I hadn't given his music any thought in years, but the - I think genuinely felt - tribute in the movie Keanu reminded me that, yeah, the guy had a bunch of great songs.

And one of the prettiest voices

incredibly sad. wrote so many fantastic songs - produced a ton of them himself and played most instruments on a lot of his biggest hits.

co-sign on Amazing. i heard that properly for the first time after meeting my current amazing partner a few years after coming out of an awfully painful breakup - and it captured that feeling of how incredible a connection to a new person can be so well.

will miss the hell out of him - and he always seemed mega genuine. not to mention releasing Outside so soon after the horrendous UK police and press had tried its hardest to wreck his life was such a fucking ballsy move. what a dude.

and though it wasn't an incredible track, Shoot The Dog was ballsy as hell too.

Wow. Unlike Bowie or even Prince, George Michael was ours, my generation's prodigy. His casual mastery of pop form was daunting -- just two days ago Javier Gomez and I were in awe of his 1984-1985 dominance, as we listened to "Last Christmas," the only Xmas standard of the last 40 years after Mariah Carey's.

Sorry -- the aforementioned is a friend. I'm drunk.

Any cause of death confirmed?

Careless Whisper, the world's smoothest song.

Any cause of death confirmed?

"no suspicious circumstances" usually means suicide

or a long illness

anyway this quote from 1988 sums up a lot

"If you listen to a Supremes record or a Beatles record, which were made in the days when pop was accepted as an art of sorts, how can you not realize that the elation of a good pop record is an art form? Somewhere along the way, pop lost all its respect. And I think I kind of stubbornly stick up for all of that."

Hadn't been in and out of the hospital over the last couple years?

no suspicious circumstances in UK police speak is probably actually more like "we can't see an obvious cause of death but nothing suggests murder/foul play". if there is no obvious cause they cannot give an absolute public answer on anything until an autopsy legally makes it clear. due to recent quietness i expect its just more of his recent ill health problems.

I was going down for the third time - my heart was broken, I was not open to your suggestion - had so many questions that you just kissed away. I guess that Cupid was in disguise the day you walked in & changed my life. I think it's amazing, the way that love can set you free. So now I walk in the midday sun. I never thought that my savior'd come. I think it's amazing. I think you're amazing.

standing behind a club in 2007 listening to this on headphones over and over, my lifeline, in a state of disbelief that the guy whose "Edge of Heaven" had taken me by surprise in '85 -- I was so young, music moved so fast, I'd figured Wham! was old news and I'd moved on and then BAM, there it was...but life is long and there's so much, and by '07 I'm not thinking about Wham or G.M. at all, that's stuff from my teen years right? and the iTunes says "new George Michael single" and I say "sure, let's give it a shot, he was so good once"

and then that burbly 4 a.m. muffled club synth intro into that smooth beat and that da-da-das

you were a giant, George Michael. truly a giant.

If Lou Reed made me gay, and David Bowie made me insouciant about it, then George Michael helped me realize it.

<3

I put youtube on my tv and have been shuffling through his catalog, crying and dancing and quietly thinking about George

such a friend to my ears

"As" on right now & I simultaneously wish for a dance party and rain

Oh George

I wrote this in September, when he wasn't dead.

An amazing artist with a huge heart and a wicked sense of humour. RIP George.

oh man "Somebody to Love": It's this perfect combo of techinical prowess + passion. He was the only performer that night who projected not only how much he LOVED Freddie Mercury's music, which is quite enough if you're straight, but how Queen had saved him.

Consummate artist

and I can't get past how often he sneaked gay overtones into these massive pop hits. "Different Corner," sure, but listen to "One More Try" without thinking it's a gay "Maggie May."

"One More Try" is maybe a top 5 vocal performance of the late 80s (at least)

fuck this shit. <3 and rest in peace George.

RIP
the morbid weirdness of hearing "Lazarus" and "Sometimes it Snows in April" and "You Want It Darker" and now and "Last Christmas" sums up this year all too neatly

no suspicious circumstances in UK police speak is probably actually more like "we can't see an obvious cause of death but nothing suggests murder/foul play".

true, and "unexplained" doesn't really indicate it was suicide.

thinking illness, esp since the family said he died peacefully

his spokesperson said he hadn't been ill, but tbh we're already knee-deep in not-our-business territory so

Some striking photos here:

https://www.theguardian.com/music/gallery/2016/dec/26/george-michael-life-in-pictures

lovely bittersweet listen here, George's Desert Island Discs ep from 2007

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b008006s

Oh thanks!

8 years ago, I got his Twenty- FIve, which has shit from Older and Patience that I had never heard and really liked it… I knew "fastlove" referencing his recently deceased boyfriend, and "outside" which has a funny vid re: his "importuning" arrest but that was it…which is to say that in America, his work past Listen W/out P. is obscure; like, what he did in 1990-1991 was not in tune with the 90s alt-milieu, and I don't remember the MOR audience going for him.

I would be interested in English people's, or people from anywhere else, impressions of his last 20 years: like did his shit get on the radio or you heard it everywhere you went upon release? is ti true that he was huge everywhere else?

Older was massive in Australia iirc

This feels cruel and unfair.

Fuck you 2016.

Outside and its accompanying video are one of the most fearless and funny artefacts in pop. A 100% "up yours!" to the media and the establishment. I'm so sad that he's gone but so happy that he turned devastating events into something so joyous. He did not give a shit in the last 10-15 years. I think he was happy and happy being a fuck up. He was brutally honest with George and generous to others.

What a FANTASTIC man!

He was a hell of a ballad singer, and as close to a pure pop artist/auteur as the 80s had - MJ and Madonna had too much outside help to really qualify, Prince was too rock/funk/whatever and too flat out eccentric. Not a first-rate lyricist but at best he was pretty sly. What nobody ever mentions is that he was also a preternaturally gifted composer - "Freedom '90" and "Jesus to a Child" among others are as remarkable for their structure and arrangements and chord changes as they are for their by-now-obvious subtext. This is OTM:

His casual mastery of pop form was daunting

And so is this:

fresh out of the gate, he had more hits than most people would even dare to pray for, every one of them a dense tapestry of impulses & influences; and he was underrated from early on, too

RIP.

Even though Faith was massive pretty much everywhere, it is odd that he is never really quite considered part of the Bruce/Madonna/Michael/Prince/Whitney 80s pop royalty, although I'm probably coming at this from a very American (by way of Canada) perspective. I'm likely guilty of underrating him myself; between owning a cassette of Faith when I was 10 and rediscovering the album only a few years ago, I don't think I ever thought of him outside the occasional public embarrassment. Even watching the news just now, on which every song they played clips from--aside from "Wake Me Up Before You Go Go"--was from Faith, it really is astonishing how one album produced so many massive singles.

RIP

i always figured him in pop royalty, growing up in Australia may have helped that impression I guess

insane *not* to think of him as such

One of my husband's relatives, just now: "Did he leave behind a wife and kids?"

Hmm. Dare I ask what the reaction was when this person was disabused?

I think someone needs to write a short novel/film about Lindsay Anderson and Wham! in China in 1985

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2023/jul/07/dead-dogs-capitalist-critique-and-only-four-songs-when-wham-squashed-lindsay-andersons-china-film

We enjoyed the documentary tremendously, especially my wife who was/is a massive Wham!/George Michael fan. It was really amazing how they made it through with their friendship relatively intact given the diverging interests the Wham! journey and Michael's solo career presented.

A genuine friendship: they understood each other's weaknesses. I can't remember a single moment in his life when Michael slagged off or condescended to Andrew.

If we take Ridgeley's word -- and why not? -- he's the most gracious junior partner in pop history. A true mensch.

thought of that as well.

Also appreciated the point that they had hard to please immigrant dads — in order to succeed in their eyes they actually had to be the best, et voila.

I reviewed this thing.

Tissue-thin it may be, but it had some great bits, like the story of Careless Whisper getting homogenized at Muscle Shoals. Or the fact that Andrew's mom saved the "wake me up before you go go" sign in a scrapbook.

I'd love to watch a deep dive on the songwriting and recording process, but the audience for that is probably significantly smaller.

The problem is, producers underestimate the intelligence of the audience. George Michael already went around this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3MZgGiIAQY

on some level the two of them had to realize that the only way to out-stud the simon lebon and john taylor of rio and seven and the ragged tiger was with a greek man

I enjoyed the documentary (and your piece, Alfred). I wonder if there's anyone else who was so big who had such a drop-off of productivity, and so young. He was still in his 20s when he released Listen Without Prejudice - and yet there were only two more albums of original material to follow before his death 26 years later.

I once heard someone describe it as, “He pulled the cord on his career too early” – which I thought was apt. Releasing an album called “Older” at age 33, etc.

i love Older

from last week's Popbitch

Netflix's new documentary on Wham! is a gorgeous snapshot of the friendship between George Michael and Andrew Ridgeley. There's hundreds of stories about the bond they shared, but here's another nice one we heard.

During Robbie Williams' first coke bloat era (post-Take That; Glastonbury with the Gallaghers) he found himself at Jimmyz nightclub in Monte Carlo where he saw George Michael on the dance floor. Aware that every boy band member who went solo always said something along the lines of "I want to be the next George Michael!" Robbie thought it might be funny to turn that whole trope on its head.

So he went up to George and said: "I wanna be the next Andrew Ridgeley..."

A line which not only failed to raise a smile out of George, but caused George to look Robbie dead in the eye and snap: "DON'T take the piss out of Andrew."

Wow, love it.

he was definitely much loved in his home village of Goring. My wife and I have been walking the Thames path and found ourselves there a few weeks ago, on what would have been George's 60th birthday. In all the pubs and the village hall they were playing his music and selling T-shirts and other memorabilia bearing his image. I had been in George's local previously, for a work meeting with someone who lived there who said that George was a regular and was treated like any other customer although he was "huge now". When I raised an eyebrow at this, I was told that he now weighed 20st (127kg) and when we left, he pointed down the street to where George's house was and explained that George would always get in his Range Rover and drive the short distance to get there, barely 200 metres. That was in early December 2016. George died at Christmas that year :-(

that demo tape from the wham doc...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRi53xDDgTA

raises so many banal questions... how did andrew learn to play funk guitar? was george operating a drum machine? how'd they afford it? who's on bass? how did george learn to produce on the portastudio? where is the full tape???

The answers to your questions are found here:

https://medium.com/@paulmex/pressing-the-record-button-on-pop-history-4d62b4744410

Incredible! Thanks!

From a Neil Tennant interview:

I first met him in 1982. I interviewed him and Andrew (Ridgley) for Smash Hits and then the last time we saw him it was exactly 30 year later, at the Olympic closing ceremony. We were in these Portakabin-y dressing rooms and the person next to us is playing music unbelievably loudly. I said to our tour manager: ‘Can you go and ask him to turn that down, please?’ And suddenly the door flings open and George, who we hadn’t seen since he’d been in jail, comes in and says: ‘Did you just tell me to turn my music down?’ I said: ‘Yes, I did.’ And he says: ‘Give me a hug.’ And then he went back to his dressing room, put his stereo on and played West End Girls – loudly.”

Ridgley’s RRHOF induction speech for GM was great.

<3

Michael was a massive PSB fan. Chris Heath's first PSB book notes how in 1989 GM hung out by the sound booth pumping his fist in the air to "Left to My Own Devices" singing every word.