When George Michael released his first solo album, “Faith,” in 1987, his first order of business was to slay the beast of his previous life in Wham!
As the first (and title) track of the album fades in, you hear a funeral organ version of the group’s 1984 smash “Freedom” playing solemnly. The statement of intent was clear: The old George Michael was dead. But the world ended up liking the new George Michael a whole lot more.
For any former teen pop idol looking to be taken seriously as an older, mature independent artist, George Michael’s passage to solo stardom remains one of the ultimate benchmarks. For most mortals, Wham! was a success story that would be impossible to top.
Together with co-member Andrew Ridgeley, they sold millions of albums, scored six Billboard Top 10 hits and, in 1985, became the first Western pop act to play the then-mysterious and closed-off land of China.
It didn’t matter that Michael was the brains of the operation (writing and producing much of the duo’s catalogue), casual observers still saw him as a member of a fluffy boy band. But when Michael went solo, he showed his own worth emphatically.
“Faith” saw him wielding his sexuality (“Father Figure”) and proving he had his finger on the pulse of cutting-edge dance/R&B culture (“Hard Day” and “Monkey”).
But that was made to look like child’s play compared to his 1990 opus “Listen Without Prejudice Volume 1” (which has long been due for an expanded release in 2017). Written, produced and arranged almost entirely by Michael himself, this more somber, thoughtful collection allowed Michael to show his inward-looking melancholia.
In the space of five years, Michael had gone from topping the charts with Wham!’s “Everything She Wants” to “Praying for Time” — a dramatic and impressive progression.
It also allowed him to quietly step back from the limelight, while maintaining his ability to write hits. The iconic video for “Freedom ‘90” did away with the pop convention of having the artist in the video.
Instead, he used five of the era’s top supermodels — Naomi Campbell, Tatjana Patitz, Cindy Crawford, Linda Evangelista and Christy Turlington — to lip-sync the lyrics for him. Despite record company objections, the track was a worldwide success, the video was rarely off MTV, and it remains a definitive pop culture moment of the period.
That development is one that almost every boy-band member keeps in mind when moving out on their own, but few have the talent to pull it off. It’s easy to draft the hippest producer and songwriters to do the work for you, but George Michael was gifted and determined enough to do it all himself.
But the complete George Michael only became visible when he was given no choice. After being caught committing a lewd act in a Los Angeles bathroom in 1998, he was outed as gay. (He later admitted he avoided coming out earlier so his mother wouldn’t have to worry about AIDS.)
Such an incident could kill lesser careers. But there was no attempt at damage limitation; instead, Michael owned his misadventure and identity with the brilliant, disco-inspired “Outside” — a funky ode to al fresco sex, complete with mock video surveillance lampooning his own arrest.
It was the most honest moment of his career, and 15 years after Wham! first began playing to screaming hordes of teenage girls, George Michael had solidified his status as a gay icon. It was an astonishing and fascinating journey, and one that helped changed the parameters of what a pop star could be.