George Michael R.I.P.

Amazing how patronised George is in that clip, while being the most broadly knowledgeable and open person on the panel. ugh, Morrissey.

Had never heard (or heard of) "If I Told You That" until this morning.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7EjfbyCpAxA

Love the guy but his post 96 output save Amazing was dismal

i mean i know i'm cap'n save an artist's later work but having gone through it just earlier this year this is absolutely untrue

i mean, "cars and trains"! "precious box"! "an easier affair"!

'Flawless'
'Shoot the Dog'

more sparse than dismal

Outside too.

George does come across very tasteful and intelligent in that eight days a week episode. But fucking Morrissey ... ugh! indeed, what a repulsive lil' arrogant overgrown 6th former cunt he makes out of himself.

that was the raw material he had tbf

this is gorgeous:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SRAOG-BpNOw

his combination of chops and soul, passion and control was sublime

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QbWJO8RMg1A

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?

― veronica moser,

Older was to England what Faith was in America: a massive hit.

t became Michael's biggest-selling album in his homeland, achieving over 1.8 million copies sold, and receiving a 6xPlatinum certification by the BPI on 5 December 1997. In the UK, it spent a total of 147 weeks inside the Top 200, 99 of them on the Top 75, and 35 of them on the Top 10 (including 23 consecutive weeks).[13] The steady sales of the album were the result of good promotion market and the release of six hit singles throughout a 2-year period. All of these singles (except for the one for the title track) were released and promoted as EP's, in two available formats, most of them containing previously unreleased material (including live tracks, alternate versions and, in the case for the Spinning the Wheel EP, two new studio recordings of brand-new George Michael compositions). Most of these singles were promoted with live performances at Top of the Pops and also music videos were recorded for the four first singles. All of this helped to push the album sales from one week to another, with the album usually returning to the Top 10 in the British charts. For example, when "Star People '97" was released in mid-1997, Older achieved a 21-14-10-7 progression on the charts. Very much the same happened when "You Have Been Loved/The Strangest Thing '97" was issued as the sixth single (fourteen months after the original release of the album), and Older showed a 24-14-7 move on the UK charts. In all, Older currently sits as the 97th best selling album of all time in the United Kingdom.

Listened to Battlestations for the first time in 25 years today. Loved it at the time then but didn't fully appreciate what a Prince-inspired classic it clearly was.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GSxl3CHeI7Q

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?

― veronica moser,

Just check and his last hit in the US was 20 years ago, what were you lot thinking? In that same period, he had 10 more top 10 hits and 5 top 20 hits in the UK.

RIP George btw.

Have you listened to American radio in the last 20 years? Nuance is not one of its prized qualities.

Stunned at the level of grief and interest in his death to be honest. Obviously he was much more popular in the UK. "I Want Your Sex" is a sick fucking song, those synth stabs in the chorus. But grouping him in with Prince and Bowie (haven't read all of this thread yet but I've seen that appraisal elsewhere) seems insane to me.

Faith sold 10 million copies here but....really? George Michael??

I dunno, no need to really compare legends, but I think George Michael always came across as a musical genius in a way that's somewhat similar to Prince - a soulful perfectionist

Gtfo dickhole xpost

Faith sold 10 million copies here but....really? George Michael??

Yeah, what about it?

... and I wasn't even that much of a fan of his tbh.

Faith is as good as any of the great Prince albums

even the extended CD version doesn't contain filler

(original longer CD / cassette track listing)

listening to Faith again now. Hand To Mouth should have seen him be award a songwriting credit for Richard Marx's 'Hazard'

i dug the songs i heard on VH1 as a kid (i want your sex and wake me up before you go-go), but i always had this image of him as washed up, a has been. Faith came out before I was born, probably has something to do with it. though i saw several of my friends talk about that christmas song he did. not trying to be disrespectful, i had no idea he was so beloved.

Has the stuff Lindsay Anderson filmed of Wham ever come out?

i always had this image of him as washed up, a has been

How respectful of you to share that with us.

to many, not maintaining impressive sales and chart positions in America = outright failure

How unlike Prince and Bowie who, by contrast, had an unbroken line of commercial and critical successes from their heyday up until their deaths.

I loved this guy's songs even when I didn't know some of the songs were his. Like for years I didn't know he was behind Careless whisper and everything she wants, two of the songs that perfectly encapsulate everything great about the '80s sound. Faith is a monster of an album. even when I was ten and hearing this guy solo for the first time it was pretty clear he was something special. I think his solo career even by itself is pretty superior and if you include Wham! it puts him on a level with some of those other giants being mentioned in the same breath. Don't see it being mentioned much but damn he was a great great singer too. The voice he had.

i dug the songs i heard on VH1 as a kid (i want your sex and wake me up before you go-go), but i always had this image of him as washed up, a has been. Faith came out before I was born, probably has something to do with it.

I felt pretty much the same way of David Bowie, but I didn't come to share that on his RIP thread. Certainly GM's music meant more to me (and most likely to many others of my generation) than anything Bowie ever did, and to say that he shouldn't be remembered as being in the same league as Prince or Bowie is inexplicable rockism. He was a pop genius.

Also, America is not the world, so it shouldn't be a huge surprise that artists you don't hear about there might be beloved elsewhere?

xxxxpost

I just saw him do "Feeling Good" for the first time yesterday. <3
His covers .., man, he really knocks your socks off

https://youtu.be/WxBr_9EkmQ0

I loved this when it came out in 2000 - George & Whitney dancing together in the video is still a treat

https://youtu.be/7EjfbyCpAxA

A (surprisingly) thoughtful and poignant tribute from Armond White.

I hope everyone loves "Too Funky" as much as you should.

more!

just watched the rehearsal of "Somebody to Love" from the 1991 tribute. cotdamn. like Alfred said above, he's about the only one who approached what Freddie did on this song - most covers of this tune or live performances are always so antiseptic and he's so locked in even in the rehearsal. this is a song where melisma isn't inherently a bad thing, but both Freddie and George used it in a way that served the song, yet i like that George didn't note-for-note replicate Freddie's runs at the end.

Gtfo dickhole

― Neanderthal, Monday, December 26, 2016 5:42 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

OTM.

Best thing I've read by Armond White, easily.

as a gay guy who makes a little music i have often related to George Michael's voice in a very particular way. it created a niche for "people like me" in an industry so hard to penetrate. as embarrassing as it is that i've never listened to Prince or Bowie, i feel proud that George in many ways taught me how to sing!

Personally, I'm finding news of George Michael's passing as difficult to process as Bowie and Prince earlier on in the year. His health problems this decade were well documented, but even with that in mind I felt he was the type of guy that would live well into his 70's at the very least. 53 is ridiculously young. That '80s stars like George Michael and Prince are passing away while '60s stars like McCartney, Jagger, Richards, Townshend etc. are still active, alive and kicking is just... wut?

Nevertheless, I'm listening to Listen Without Prejudice, Vol. 1 again for the first time in ages, and I keep forgetting how utterly fucking wonderful 'Praying For Time' is.

I've always loved George Michael's voice, and felt he was somewhat underrated as a songwriter and a producer. Maybe now, people will look at his body of work and realise that he had an amazing songwriting gift.

TMZ is saying he may have had a lot of recent weight gain and since the cause of death was heart failure, could have been related to that. it just kind of shows how random it all is - there's no equation for who lives to what age, such as the examples above.

feel like listening to "Cowboys and Angels" now.

"Praying For Time" and "Freedom '90" are kind of an amazing one-two of high profile MTV-uber-alles videos that now weirdly seem like total harbringers of the YouTube era -- a lyric video followed by a dubsmash.

'Somebody To Love' was the song I havent been able to listen to since the news. I hadn't properly cried til now & I can't stop.

It is the song that means the most to me because his performance shows how deeply he understands the song. My understanding is that Somebody was Freddie's favorite song, but the one he was most self-conscious of because of how personal it was. - I like to think that George knew that, an as an expression of solidarity & understanding - he's playing not just to the huge crowd but to the heavens.

But he inhabits the *plea*. That's where he gets me. Freddie's version can make me cry any day of the week because of that plea, that hope, that need. George captures it so perfectly. Like a great actor he not only reads the lyrics, he *listens* & answers.

He's not mimicking Freddie in any way, he feels it in his soul & pours it out the way the song demands & it defeats any argument against his right to be among the great interpreters & creators of pop music. Not that those arguments hold much water but anyway

I just feel so ;_;

so I wrote this: http://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/pop/7633317/george-michael-gay-artist-sexuality-career

really nice. i saw it linked online before too.