Goodbye, George Michael. Good Riddance to 2016!
First published on the WeChat account A Certain Movie (ID: cinematik).
A little after seven this morning, a news alert said George Michael had died peacefully on Christmas Day, aged 53… The news felt as sudden as David Bowie’s and Leonard Cohen’s deaths. Many people had been listening to Wham!’s “Last Christmas” just yesterday.
George Michael (June 25, 1963–December 25, 2016), born Georgios Kyriacos Panayiotou, was the son of a Greek immigrant who ran a restaurant and a Jewish dancer. He was born in London, then moved with his parents to Hertfordshire as a teenager. At secondary school, he would busk in the London Underground, performing Queen songs. His music career began as a DJ in a pub.
The most important thing to happen around that time was that Michael met Andrew Ridgeley, his future Wham! partner. The two young men, both dreaming of a music career, hit it off immediately. They recruited Andrew’s brother and two friends to form a band called Executive, playing the ska that was popular at the time.
An instant hit
In 1981, Michael and Ridgeley formed Wham!, and there was no looking back.
In 1983, Wham!’s debut album, Fantastic, reached number one in the UK.
“Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go,” from the 1984 album Make It Big, was Wham!’s first single to top the charts in both the UK and the US. It then stayed at the top of the US Billboard chart for 24 weeks.
Two months later, Michael’s first solo single, “Careless Whisper,” also topped the Billboard chart and spent three weeks at number one in the UK.
Since it was released in 1984, “Last Christmas,” Wham!’s best-known song, has returned to the upper reaches of the UK singles chart around Christmas every year for the past 30 years, staying there for about a month:
Then, in April 1985, came Wham!’s unforgettable China tour. As the first Western band to perform in mainland China after the founding of the People’s Republic, Wham! had a lasting influence on Chinese pop. “Careless Whisper,” translated as “A Soft Whisper” or “Careless Words,” became one of the English songs best known in China.
Watch Wham!’s 1985 performance in China
That summer, Wham! took part in Live Aid, the huge concert held to raise global awareness of AIDS. Michael performed for the first time with Elton John, singing John’s classic “Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me.”
Wham!’s run did not last long. As Michael’s solo fame grew and his songwriting flourished, he announced that he was leaving the group. Wham!’s farewell concert in 1986 brought 72,000 fans to London’s Wembley Stadium.
A solo career and new heights
In January 1987, Michael recorded a duet with his favorite jazz singer, Aretha Franklin:
“I Knew You Were Waiting (For Me).” It was his first solo single and also topped the charts, earning him his first Grammy Award.
In October 1987, Michael released his first solo album, Faith, for which he wrote, arranged, and produced every track himself. It won him his second Grammy, the 1988 Album of the Year award.
A freeze—and a comeback
In the 1990s, several of Michael’s singles, including “Praying for Time” and “Freedom! ’90,” performed well. But a contract dispute with Sony Music left him frozen out, unable to release an album for six years.
In March 1991, at the final stop of Michael’s tour at Wembley Stadium, he brought Elton John onstage. The two performed “Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me” again. Their rendition of the 1974 song swept the charts in Europe and the US. Both artists later included it on their own greatest-hits albums.
Watch Elton John and George Michael perform “Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me”
In 1996, after director Steven Spielberg helped broker a settlement, Michael and Sony Music reached an agreement. Michael then released the new album Older. “Jesus to a Child” reached number seven on the US singles chart. The album did respectably on Billboard, but sales were modest and its performance fell far short of his earlier work.
The “Beverly Hills incident” and coming out
On April 7, 1998, an undercover male police officer entrapped Michael in a park in Beverly Hills, California. He was arrested on a charge of “lewd conduct in a public place.” Michael entered a plea of no contest and was fined and sentenced to community service. Afterwards, he made a music video mocking the police and the incident.
Not long after the “Beverly Hills incident,” Michael came out in an interview with CNN. He said, “During the first half of my career, people kept saying I was gay, but I had never had a same-sex relationship.” He did not have his first boyfriend until he was 27.
A master of the cover song
Michael could write and produce his own songs, but he was also an excellent interpreter of other people’s music. Besides the renewed success of Elton John’s song after their duet, Michael’s live cover of Queen frontman Freddie Mercury’s “Somebody to Love” at the Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert was also exceptional. Apart from Freddie himself, few could match it.
In 1999, he released Songs from the Last Century, an album of jazz arrangements of classic twentieth-century songs. It was one of the last great records of his career.
2016 was a strange year. From Alan Rickman and David Bowie at the start of the year to George Michael today, so many outstanding figures in film and music have left us. Let’s say goodbye to 2016 with this tribute image, modeled on the cover of a famous Beatles album.
