Michael, George

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George Michael

Singer, songwriter

Although he began his musical career in 1980 as half of what some consider the lightweight pop outfit of Wham!, as a solo artist George Michael has been hailed as a leading creative force in popular songwriting and even mentioned as an heir to songwriting giants Paul McCartney and Elton John. Faith, his 1988 album, rose to Number One on the Billboard pop chart and sold 15 million copies. Though 1990’s Listen Without Prejudice, Vol. I was not as lucrative for Michael as Faith had been, it was nonetheless applauded by critics as an important and accomplished work.

Michael was born Georgios Kyriakou Panayiotou in London in 1963. The son of a Greek Cypriot restauranteur, Michael was the youngest of three siblings. As a boy he dreamed of becoming a pilot; he was disappointed to find, however, that his myopia and color blindness would make that pursuit impossible. After receiving a tape recorder as a gift on his seventh birthday and unearthing some old Motown records and a phonograph, Michael hatched a new dream: He would become a recording artist. “I literally never entertained any other thought in my entire childhood and adolescence after that,” Michael told Rolling Stone’s Steve Pond.

In his early adolescence the restaurant that Michael’s father owned became successful enough for the family to move to the affluent suburb of Bushey. While in school there Michael met Andrew Ridgeley, who would later become his partner in Wham! Ridgeley was popular, attractive, and stylish. At the time, Michael was shy and overweight. Though it seemed unlikely, the two became friends as they discovered a shared interest in pop music. The duo began recording songs together on Michael’s tape recorder.

Quit School to Form Band

Although Michael’s parents wanted him to enter a “respectable” profession like law or medicine, at the age of 16 he and Ridgeley quit school to form a band called The Executive. Tension among band members, however, led to a split before the ensemble had played a half-dozen gigs. Despite this turbulent beginning, Michael was not swayed from his dream. He continued to write songs while earning a living from a variety of odd jobs. In 1981 he and Ridgeley completed their first demo tape and sent it to a variety of record producers. By early 1982 the talented pair had won a contract with Innervision records.

With fame approaching, Michael decided to change his name from the intimidating Georgios Panayiotou to the more accessible George Michael. Taking their

For the Record…

Born Georgios Kyriakou Panayiotou, June 25, 1963, in London, England; son of Jack (a restauranteur) and Lesley Panayiotou.

With Andrew Ridgeley, formed group The Executive, 1979; worked at odd jobs while composing songs and working on demo tapes, 1980-82; signed with Innervision records, 1982, and released first Wham! album, Fantastic; performed with Wham!, 1982-86; toured China with Wham!, 1985; solo artist, 1986—. Producer and writer, Trojan Souls (featuring Anita Baker, Bryan Ferry, Aretha Franklin, and Elton John, among others), Hardback Records/Warner Bros.

Awards: Grammy Award nomination (with Ridgeley) for best pop performance by a duo, 1985, for “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go” ; American Video Award (with Ridgeley) for best new video artist, 1985; Igor Novello Award for best songwriter, British Academy of Songwriters, Composers, and Authors, 1985; Grammy Award (with Aretha Franklin) for best rhythm and blues performance by a duo, 1987, for “I Knew You Were Waiting (For Me)” ; MTV Video Award for best direction, 1988, for video “Faith” ; Grammy Award for album of the year, 1988, for Faith; American Music Awards for best pop male vocalist, best soul/rhythm and blues vocalist, and best soul/rhythm and blues album, all 1989, for Faith.

Addresses: Home —London, England. Record company —Columbia Records, 1801 Century Park W., Los Angeles, CA 90067.

group’s moniker from a song Michael had written—“Wham! Rap (Enjoy What You Do)”—the duo released an album in the summer of 1982, Fantastic, that reached Number Four on the British charts.

The next Wham! album, Make It Big, made the pair teen idols in Britain and became popular in the States as well. Their style had changed from the previous record; on their first album, rap-style songs and a leather-clad bad-boy image prevailed. For Make It Big, Michael reached back to his early years to compose songs with a Motown feel. The single “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go” became a Number One hit in England, the U.S., Australia, and a handful of other countries. It also garnered a Grammy nomination. Michael and Ridgeley won popular acclaim, but there was a price to pay; critics categorized Wham! as pretty-boy pop.”I totally threw away my personal credibility for a year and a half in order to make sure my music got into so many people’s homes, “Michael told David Fricke in Rolling Stone.” It was a calculated risk, and I knew I would have to fight my way back from it.”

Wham! completed another album in 1985 and took a tour of China, the first Western group to do so. But Michael was growing restless within the creative confines of the group. In 1986, still shaken by the dissolution of a long-term romantic relationship, Michael made the decision to dissolve Wham! The group was at the peak of its popularity. After a disagreement with his management, Michael chose to manage his career by himself.

Faith

To erase his teenybopper image, Michael recorded a duet with soul high priestess Aretha Franklin. The single, titled “I Knew You Were Waiting (For Me),” won a Grammy Award in 1987. Also that year, Michael released his first solo album, Faith. The album quickly soared to the Number One position and earned remarkable sales. One single in particular, “I Want Your Sex,” caused quite a stir among radio programmers. Many stations banned it, and others restricted it only to late-hour play. The commotion was caused primarily by the song’s lyrics—though the accompanying video was none too tame—which seemed to encourage people to have sex. Michael, however, contended that the message was a positive one that promoted monogamy in the age of AIDS, not promiscuity. Despite the hubbub, or perhaps because of it, “I Want Your Sex” became a Number Two hit.

Faith spun four more hit singles: the infectious title track, “Father Figure,” “One More Try,” and “Monkey.” The album also topped the black album chart—the first time a white artist had achieved this honor. This was a moment of personal triumph for the Motown-inspired artist. He revealed to Gary Graff of the Detroit Free Press, “I was much happier with [Faith] being the No. 1 black album than I was when it became the No. 1 pop album. There was much more of a sense of achievement.”

Faith was hailed as a crowning achievement by many reviewers. Stephen Holden wrote in the New York Timesthai the album “demonstrates that Mr. Michael’s stylistic range and skill at integrating inventive new sounds into strong, well-shaped tunes is unequaled by any young pop craftsman with the possible exception of Prince.” Rolling Stone’s Mark Coleman opined, “George finally proves once and for all that he’s no mere genius chart hack.” Holden’s rave concluded, “Mr. Michael’s metamorphosis from journeyman to innovator has been so swift and dramatic that one can’t begin to imagine where he’ll go from Faith.”

In 1990 Michael followed up his enormous solo debut with Listen Without Prejudice. Vol. I. Despite the album’s weightier themes, the singer’s sex-symbol image continued to haunt him, partly because of a popular Saturday Night Live skit that parodied the unmistakable focus on Michael’s rhythmically shaking rear end featured in the video for “Faith.” In fact, Listen Without Prejudice was largely an attempt to once and for all dispel the superficial image of the Wham! days. One song, “Freedom,” spawned a video of lip-synching models that featured several shots of the leather jacket Michael had worn in the “Faith” video bursting into flame—clear evidence of the artist’s repudiation of the earlier video’s relentless image selling. Further proof of this direction could be found in Michael’s pointed absence from the video. “This time around,” James Hunter wrote of the record in Rolling Stone, “George Michael has begun to think that he should provide something to his fans beyond fun and games.” Hunter went on to point out that Michael “fashions just the kind of bold pop with rock and soul overtones that Listen Without Prejudice aims for.” Though Listen did not rack up the sales that Faith had, it was viewed as definitive testimony of Michael’s artistic legitimacy.

AIDS Activism and Record Company Battle

In 1992 Michael appeared at the star-studded Concert for Life, an AIDS awareness benefit and tribute to recently deceased Queen vocalist Freddie Mercury. Backed by a full gospel choir, Michael performed the demanding Queen classic “Somebody to Love” for a thousands-strong audience of diehard Queen fans massed at London’s Wembley Stadium. His stunning rendition, in which, it seemed, he effortlessly approximated Mercury’s soaring tenor, was a much commented upon highlight of the event. Later that year, Michael cut his teeth at directing, getting behind the camera to oversee the making of the “Too Funky” video. The song was one of three Michael contributed to the album Red, Hot & Dance, another project organized to raise funds for AIDS charities. Said project coordinator Leigh Blake of Michael’s work, according to David Wild’s Rolling Stone piece on Red, Hot & Dance, “We had already pretty much made the record when the possibility [of Michael’s addition] came up. His involvement has made all the difference.”

The singer made news in late 1992 with a lawsuit against Sony Music UK, his record label, charging in a London court that the agreement constituted a restraint of trade. Alleging in a prepared statement that was reprinted in People, among other sources, that Sony regards “artists as little more than software,” Michael sought to break his recording contract—due to expire in 2003—which requires that he produce six more albums for the label. Particularly revealing were the artist’s remarks, reprinted in Rolling Stone, lamenting that “the great American music company that I proudly signed to as a teenager (has) become a small part of the production line for a giant electronics corporation, who, quite frankly, have no understanding of the creative process.” Sony had purchased Michael’s previous label, CBS, in 1988. Distilling the importance of the move, Entertainment Weekly postulated, “If Michael wins, the precedent could allow other bands to break from acquiring companies, doing to the music industry what free agency did for baseball.”

The pending litigation overshadowed Michael’s musical efforts of that time, including his production for Warner Bros. of Trojan Souls, an album of new Michael compositions performed by such artists as Anita Baker, Bryan Ferry, Aretha Franklin, and Elton John, with whom Michael had developed a close personal and working relationship, amply symbolized by their duet of John’s “Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me,” recorded on the Elton John-Bernie Taupin tribute album, Two Rooms. Listen Without Prejudice Vol. II, the singer’s apparently incomplete but much ballyhooed third album, was sentenced to limbo as a result of the Sony suit.

George Michael unabashedly championed pop music at a time when many had abandoned the form as so much glossy drivel. His dedication to the genre, however, did not insulate him from the insecurities of an artist torn between people-pleasing and critical success. He articulated his fears that his audience could not appreciate the duality of his creative output to the Detroit Free Press’s Graff, suggesting, “If people can try to understand as opposed to being suspicious of it, maybe they can appreciate the music a bit more.”

Selected discography

With Wham!

Fantastic, Innervision, 1982.

Make It Big, Columbia, 1984.

Music From the Edge of Heaven, Columbia, 1985.

Solo releases

Faith, Columbia, 1987.

Listen Without Prejudice. Vol. I, Columbia, 1990.

Contributor to Two Rooms: Celebrating the Songs of Elton John & Bernie Taupin, Polydor, 1991; Red, Hot & Dance, Columbia, 1992; and A Very Special Christmas II, A&M, 1992. Also recorded duet with Aretha Franklin, “I Knew You Were Waiting (For Me),” released as single, 1987.