Bueller? Bueller? Anybody? I can't be the only one who thinks this. It is entirely possible, of course, that, in all matters George Michael, I simply assume the most plausible interpretation is the gayest interpretation.
You mean to tell me that the "monkey" in question is simply the clingy love interest of George's object of affection? "Why can't you set your monkey free?" Wink wink. "Always giving in to it"? Notice he doesn't say "Always giving in to him," he says "Always giving in to it" - it being, quite obviously, the guy's penis. He's always pleasuring himself instead of pleasuring George. Clear as a bell.
Maybe referring to a lover as a "monkey" is a British thing? I've heard the term "gorilla" be used to refer to a person, even "chimp," but "monkey"? Is that like a girlfriend who can't figure out how to pull an orange out of a jar or something? The only romantic/sexual term I know involving "monkey" would be "spanking the monkey." One racially provocative theory on YouTube is that the song is about a black guy who's trying to steal George's girlfriend/boyfriend. A better theory on YouTube is that the song is actually about being with a partner who's wrestling with drug addiction. This might explain George's frustration at having to "share my baby with a monkey" and other lyrics such as "Don't look now, there's a monkey on your back."
Whatever. I'm sticking with the penis theory.
I recall most of the hits from Faith being about as inescapable as breakfast cereal commercials (side question: what exactly does a toucan have to do with loops flavored like fruit?), but ... I have absolutely zero recollection of hearing "Monkey" in 1988. I first heard it when I borrowed a copy of Faith from my local library in the summer of 1999. I had read that the song ended up becoming the fourth US #1 hit from the album. A #1 hit that I had never actually heard? Curious. Maybe it had charted on pure commercial momentum, and then sank from the airwaves, a la "Batdance" or "Who's That Girl"? Maybe it ... stank? I mean, if it was any good, I surely would have heard it at some point on the radio, right? You couldn't go to the mall for five seconds without hearing "Father Figure" or "One More Try" blast through the JC Penney doors (not even in 1999!).
Well, when I finally got around to "Monkey" on the ol' CD from the library ... hot damn. Talk about a slammin', jammin', first-rate slice of Georgios funk.
"Monkey" is like the best Rick James/Debbie Gibson collaboration that never was. It's simultaneously bubblegum and tough as nails. Check out George's version of what I can only term vocal "scratching" at 0:34 ("like you did just then-then, th-th-then, then-just-then, just-just-just do it again"). What is this, Grandmaster George and the Furious Stubble? And get a load of that bridge! Rick Nowels probably shook his head with shame the minute he heard it, knowing he would never be able to approach its slinky, momentum-generating perfection. And to think I assumed this had just been a "tag-along" #1, eh? Au contrere, mon frere. As #1 hits from Faith go, "Monkey" might have been even more deserving of that appellation than "Faith" itself.
However. There's a catch.
The album version of "Monkey" that I came to know and love wasn't, as far as I can tell, the version that was actually a hit. That version was a Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis remix, which is the version featured in the music video. Listen. My admiration for Jam & Lewis's work with Janet Jackson knows no bounds, but ... I find this remix inferior to the album mix. They took out all the bass! And they added a bunch of extra organ chords to the chorus. You know what they did? They monkeyed around with "Monkey."
Which is fine, of course, for a club release, or a B-side. But if this had been August 1988, and I had heard the album version of "Monkey" on the radio, and then went out and bought the single version, I can tell you one thing: I would have been pissed. (The remix is even the version that appears on Ladies & Gentlemen: the Best of George Michael - it's like the "Everything She Wants" nonsense all over again.) Or is the Jam & Lewis mix the mix that was actually played on the radio? In that case, maybe "Monkey" didn't deserve to go to #1 after all. Professor Higglediggle adds:
Through employment of an unusual simian metaphor, Michael's "Monkey" dissects the post-colonial tension between British subjugation and African resistance, the singer's admission "I hate your friends/But I don't know how and I don't know when/To open your eyes" illustrating Frantz Fanon's concept of the divided self-perception of the Black Subject as discussed in Black Skin, White Masks, although potentially Michael acknowledges white European culpability with the statement "If I keep on askin' baby/Maybe I'll get what I'm askin' for." Jam & Lewis's single mix can be read as an attempt to re-appropriate Michael's cultural appropriation of black R&B, marking the track, in both versions, as a twin access of racial expression, although one that does not entirely avoid the trap of Levi-Strauss's conception of animal myth.
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