Unnerved and alarmed by my shocking failure to recognize the grossly forged nature of the Phil Collins "memoir" which I so eagerly devoured and so frequently quoted over the course of several years, I began to wonder (and fear): could it be at all possible that I'd ... made the same mistake twice?
Loyal readers may recall that, only a short while after "discovering" the fraudulent (if highly amusing) Collins work, I came across an equally strange text, Father Figure: The Socio-Political Implications of George Michael in the Post-Modern Landscape, which, unlike the bogus autobiography, was purportedly written not by the artist himself, but by an academic scholar of significant international renown: Professor Horton J. Higglediggle.
But now I began to wonder. Allegedly an instructor at the University of New South-Southwest Wales, perhaps there was something amiss with this imposing-sounding credential. Let us not forget, of course, that Professor Harold Hill never did in fact attend Gary Conservatory and was not, despite his many claims, a member of the Gold Medal class of 1905. Alas, after a quick Google search, a cold sweat enveloped my palms once again.
There is no Australian state known as New South-Southwest Wales.
What had I done?
Come on, like I know the names of Australian states? Hell, I thought they were called provinces, you know, like in Canada. Give this Yank a break. But mainly, I felt that a scholarly groundbreaking text such as Higglediggle's was too masterful to fake, too insightful to fabricate - as if some random blogger who'd spent a year in grad school could have imitated language so complex, theories so heady. Preposterous!
Then it dawned on me: at various times, hadn't I been personally corresponding with Professor Higglediggle - or if not Professor Higglediggle, then at least someone claiming to be Professor Higglediggle? And so, it was time to compose yet another letter. One evening last month, at approximately 2:00am, bottle of Absolut Vodka on my desk (presumably from Russia, but perhaps even that was a lie?), I wrote to this reclusive pseudo-Aussie once more, in a tone arguably a touch too nasty and accusatory for the occasion, but emotions were running high. A week later, I received the following reply:
Your inquiries as to the nature of my identity, though possibly not intended as such, do raise salient points about the issue of authorial authenticity in the post-textual media landscape. For if the means of publication are, for lack of a better term, democratized, and if identities can be formed and dissolved without any sense of finite legitimacy, then would there be, in any experientially or ontologically valid meaning of the term, a concrete categorical difference between the work of Professor Higglediggle and, say, an online imposter purporting to be Professor Higglediggle? In other words, if the difference between the "imposter" Higglediggle and the "real" Higglediggle cannot be established, then wouldn't the "imposter" Higglediggle become just as real as the "real" Higglediggle, in the same sense that "misquoted" classic film lines (ex: "Play it again, Sam"; "We don't need no stinking badges") have eventually, if unintentionally, risen to the status of the "real" quotation? In merely asking the question, "Who is Professor Higglediggle?" aren't we elevating the primacy of the "original" Higglediggle to an arbitrary status it may not ultimately merit?
Listen ... without extreme prejudice. (Any Apocalypse Now fans in the house?)
Toward the tail end of high school, back in the dark ages of human existence (AKA before the internet), I used to spend long, desperate nights staring at my computer screen perusing a CD-ROM created by Microsoft called Music Central, which featured, among other bits of rock journalism, several reviews from Q magazine (a UK publication, I believe?). Let me just say that it's always amusing to read album reviews that were written immediately upon those albums' release, without the benefit of even the slightest hindsight. For instance, Q magazine gave five stars to Dire Straits' long-awaited On Every Street, which currently sports a cool two stars from AMG, and they also had a hilarious habit of giving five stars to every single new Lou Reed and Van Morrison album of the '80s.
At any rate. I was only dimly aware of George Michael's Listen Without Prejudice, Vol. 1 at the time, but when I read Q magazine's five star rave review, I admit it: I got pumped. I glanced at my recently-purchased print edition of the All Music Guide, which merely gave Listen Without Prejudice four stars to Faith's five, but ... man, you should have read this review. It really whetted my appetite. So, long before I ever experienced the majesty known as "I Want Your Sex, Parts I, II, & III," I checked out a copy of Listen Without Prejudice, Vol. 1 from my local library. Upon listening (without prejudice, I assure you), I concluded that ... this particular Q magazine reviewer might have gotten a little too excited.
The tendency for arguable over-excitement can work in the opposite direction as well, such as when a performer passes on and it's suddenly "hip" and "trendy" to re-evaluate his work, as this BBC Culture article by Nick Levine titled "How George Michael Transformed Pop" demonstrates. The blurb at the top reads "Thirty years ago, the star released the commercially disappointing Listen Without Prejudice Vol 1. Now, it is rightly recognised as a groundbreaking masterpiece..." Well, maybe it's deserving of a second look, but "groundbreaking masterpiece" is one of those phrases that music journalists should only whip out on birthdays and anniversaries. "... It is seen in retrospect as the album that successfully cemented his position as a pop maestro, not a mere pop puppet." Yeah, uh, wouldn't you say that Faith is generally seen as that album? "[Paul] Flynn calls the album Michael’s 'grand apologia for being in the closet' as well as 'the album where he turns his back on fame'. 'It’s the album where he realises where his hollow ambitions have led him to, and the compromises they have involved, which have so much to do with his sexuality,' Flynn says." Well, cool story bro, but I'm not sure if George himself ever described the album in that way, even after he came out. Levine continues:
Written by a closeted gay man at the height of the epidemic, Listen without Prejudice Vol. 1 is an album steeped in the grief and confusion of the HIV/Aids era. Michael acknowledged in a 2007 Desert Island Discs interview that “Aids was the predominant feature of being gay in the 1980s and early 90s as far as any parent was concerned” and a major factor in his decision not to come out to his own family sooner. It’s little wonder that, as he became more emotionally honest in his music, he no longer sounded ready to party.
Wouldn't argue with that too much, I guess. I do like this narrative that the Q magazine and BBC Culture writers were aiming for, sort of suggesting that Faith was George Michael's Revolver and Listen Without Prejudice was his Sgt. Pepper; I'd like it more if I didn't think it was just a bit off. Let's try this one instead, using a different British George: Faith was his All Things Must Pass and Listen Without Prejudice was his Living in the Material World. In other words, the follow-up album would have been seen as a huge success, if not for the even larger success of its predecessor. Looking back, that "disappointing" follow-up album can sound pretty damn good - but would you recommend it as a starting point for the curious instead of recommending the previous album? Questionable.
I've never listened to George Michael's third solo album, Older, but I have read Stephen Thomas Erlewine's AMG review of it, which basically amounts to the same thing, and a couple of lines of his have always stuck with me: "It is one thing to be mature and another to be boring. Too often, Michael mistakes slight melodies for mature craftsmanship and Older never quite recovers." This more or less sums up how I feel about roughly 50% of Listen Without Prejudice, Vol. 1. Look, I'm completely on board with George "getting himself happy" and "taking these lies and making them true" and all that self-actualizing mumbo-jumbo; I just wished I felt the songs did all that while employing instantly hummable melodies and energetic production flourishes. "Something To Save," "Waiting For That Day," "Mother's Pride," "Heal The Pain" ... I find them pleasant, pretty, sincere, somber ... and a bit flavorless. Where the hooks, G.?
Now, I wouldn't normally get my knickers in a twist over an album that contains some tracks I love and some tracks I meh, but what gets me about Listen Without Prejudice, Vol. 1 is that I can imagine there being a version of this album that I like as much as I think George intended me to. You know what the ballads on that imaginary album all sound like? They all sound like ... "Praying For Time"! That song was serious, yeah, but seriously catchy. I feel like "Praying For Time" demonstrated that George could pull off the impossible, ie. shift his lyrical concerns while still making melodically gripping pop music. But what about the follow-through? It's like he caught the ball at the five yard line, but only scored a field goal. Sure, field goals are still points, but after the one-two punch of "Praying For Time" and "Freedom '90," I was kind of expecting a touchdown.
If there is one style George Michael thought he could pull off that Little Earl would say he really could not, that would be acoustic-based rock. I've read reviews that call "Heal the Pain" "McCartney-esque," probably because, with its synthesized conga percussion, it somewhat resembles The White Album's "I Will." But even '80s-era McCartney doesn't sound as dry and stilted to me as "Heal the Pain" does. To these ears, "Heal the Pain" is stiffer than piece of matzoh. Remember when I wrote that "Faith" didn't really rock enough? This song is like "Faith" after being left out in the sun for two weeks. Then there's "Something To Save," which I'm tempted to dub "proto-Lilith Fair." I'm convinced George found these chord changes in the back of a Sears catalog. "Waiting For the Day" comes a little closer to dance-pop by utilizing a then-ubiquitous "Funky Drummer" sample, but too bad the rest of the arrangement only utilizes two chords! I mean, "Freedom '90" also utilized a "Funky Drummer" sample, but it altered and contorted that sample so creatively that I didn't even realize the track had utilized "Funky Drummer" until a few months ago, when I wrote my blog post about "Freedom '90." Finally, "Mother's Pride" utilizes an "Asian flute" synth sound that, personally speaking, reeks of Dire Straits circa 1985. What I'm saying is that there are oodles of songs in George's catalog where I feel like he really made all the right moves and all the smartest choices. I wouldn't say that these are those songs.
Caught somewhat in between is his cover of Stevie Wonder's "They Won't Go When I Go." I remember playing the album, arriving at this track, and thinking, "Wow, what a great undiscovered George Michael song!" And then I looked at the songwriting credits and realized, "Oh, hold on a minute, it's a Stevie Wonder cover." Granted, it's an enjoyable Stevie Wonder cover. But eventually I heard the Stevie Wonder version, and, well, I don't think I'm going out on a limb by stating that improving on a Stevie Wonder track is a tall order. I give George points for picking a relatively obscure Stevie Wonder track to cover, and not screwing it up. But Faith didn't have any covers on it. Faith didn't need any covers on it. I think George simultaneously thought he could demonstrate his newfound artistic credibility and add another top-drawer composition to the album in one fell swoop. These days, I'm slightly resentful of George's cover, because, however strong it is, I simply wish I'd heard Stevie's version first. I find myself unable to listen to George's version without being ... prejudiced.
However. There are two tracks on the album that I've never tired of and would place right up there with "Praying For Time" and "Freedom '90" as Giorgios essentials. In other words, if I had found at least a couple of the other tracks discussed above as enjoyable as I find these two, I might be more inclined to support the views expressed by my friends at Q magazine and BBC Culture.
"Cowboys and Angels" is like the smoky prog rock sequel to "Kissing a Fool" (sophisti-prog?). It's supper club George, but this time with an evil film noir breeze blowing in through the slightly ajar window. Despite being seven minutes long, I find it hypnotic instead of boring, because I'm fairly certain that, wherever the hell George found these tasty chord changes, he did not find them in the back of a Sears catalog. "Cowboys and Angels" is a black and white crime film starring George Bogart, who saunters into a dimly-lit bar wearing a fedora and trench coat (and probably nothing else), sits down at the counter, and barks, "Gimme the hardest stuff ya got." And do I detect the haunted ghost of "Careless Whisper" in the sax outro? Someone decidedly, wisely I think, that the song was single material, and yet it only made it to #45 in the UK, and didn't do squat in the US. Hogwash, I say. At least George managed to sneak it onto Ladies and Gentlemen: The Best Of, which hopefully gave it the wider exposure I would say it deserved the first time around.
Finally, for those hoping that Listen Without Prejudice, Vol. 1 would offer at least one more irresistibly hook-tastic butt shaker aside from "Freedom '90," I give you "Soul Free." "Soul Free" is like the Miami Sound Machine-influenced sequel to "Monkey." It's a sultry stew of flute, congas, horns, and lusty falsetto come-ons. Maybe it's just me, but I need my Serious George leavened with campy cries like "When ya touch me bay-uh-bayyyy/Ahh don't have no choice, ooooh!" Leave that acoustic guitar in the den, George. Your head may be saying, "I'm a folksy balladeer!," but your groin is saying, "I need to hit the gay clubs, pronto."
Professor Higglediggle writes, somewhat incomprehensibly (even for him):
The lapsed modernity within the twin axes of expression presented by "Heal the Pain" and "Waiting for the Day" is only mediated by the invocation and realization of disjunctions and cohesions expressed by an interpretation of a Stevie Wonder composition, which essentializes and racializes Michael's grab-bag primitivism under a rubric of co-optation and Africanist reification. The Latin groove of "Soul Free" doubles as an amatory assemblage of tonic-dominant sonorities and a neologistic re-reading of Cuban revolutionary rhetoric, which is only undercut by the static harmonic polysemy of "Cowboys and Angels," Michael's declaration "You're not the same/Everyone's to blame" forcing us to interpret his semiotic slippage through the lens of queer theory and ethnomusicological nihilism.
What the ... my God. How many sex change operations did George Michael end up having merely to make this one single video? Let's see .. he got himself a succession of nose jobs, grew a mole, even dyed his skin a couple of times ... the guy was truly sick. I know everyone's disturbed by Michael Jackson, but this is beyond the pale.
At any rate. I'm a sucker for artists who, at the peak of their popularity, just say, "Fuck it," and decide to alienate their audience. Because if it doesn't pay off at the time, it always seems to look good in retrospect. And hey, sometimes it even pays off at the time (see: Pepper, Sgt.). The easy thing to do is to simply keep giving the audience what they want - but are you giving yourself what you want? Ideally, an artist can do both, but, let's face it, a lot of people are stupid. They just want to blow a couple of hours on a Friday night watching Fast & Furious 23 or Rocky 48.676. Most people aren't looking for a challenge.
But with "Freedom '90," I think Georgie Boy managed to have his cake and eat it too. Here we have a single that was simultaneously a giant kiss-off to the entire record-buying public AND a zippy, latin-tinged uptempo hip-shaker that, lyrical claims to the contrary, pretty much gave the record-buying public exactly what they wanted. Merely reading the lyrics on the cold page, one might imagine this song as a ballad, but Georgios rides this "Sympathy for the Devil" groove for six-and-a-half minutes and sounds like he's having the time of his life doing it. (A few of my favorite musical details: the "I Saw Her Standing There"-style hand claps that pepper the vamp which follows the opening chorus; the rapid acoustic guitar strums that kick off each line of the verse; the piano glissando that powers the verse into the pre-chorus.) Against all odds, despite all the bitterness and self-hatred he's dishing out, the sprightliness of the music somehow reflects the "freedom" he's proclaiming in the lyrics. Yeah, go ahead, name me another top 10 hit from the early '90s that's anything like this one. I'll be waiting.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest that, by the time of Listen Without Prejudice, Vol. 1, George Michael was recalling his Wham! years with, shall we say, a distinct lack of fondness. Personally, I'd rather have a Wham! marathon than, I dunno, a Sonic Youth marathon, but that's just me. Come on George, don't be so hard on yourself. But I suppose he was feeling the sting of artistic remorse. In the first verse of "Freedom '90," George prefaces this howl of conscience with a vulnerable plea:
I won't let you down
I will not give you up
Gotta have some faith in the sound
It's the one good thing that I've got
I won't let you down
So please don't give me up
'Cause I would really, really love to stick around, oh yeah
Translation: My new music ain't gonna sound like my old music, but you got to have faith-uh-faith-uh-faith-uh! Then the mea culpa commences:
Heaven knows I was just a young boy
Didn't know what I wanted to be
I was every little hungry schoolgirl's pride and joy
And I guess it was enough for me
To win the race, a prettier face
Brand new clothes and a big fat place
On your rock and roll T.V.
But today the way I play the game is not the same, no way
Think I'm gonna get myself happy
Well, I can certainly see why he wouldn't have found being "every little hungry schoolgirl's pride and joy" particularly fulfilling. Hi-Yo! But I digress. Have you ever had doubts about something you were doing, and yet ... you decided to keep doing it anyway? I've never had this happen to me personally, but I've had friends tell me what it's like. Wears you out, grinds you down, until one day you just can't take it anymore. And you know that switching gears is going to cost you, but you're willing to pay that price, because it's finally dawned on you that the cost of not switching gears might be higher. That's "Freedom '90":
I think there's something you should know
I think it's time I told you so
There's something deep inside of me
There's someone else I've got to be
Take back your picture in a frame
Take back your singing in the rain
I just hope you understand
Sometimes the clothes do not make the man
You can change, George! It's OK! I allow it! Jesus H. Christ. He's making Wham! sound like the Nazi Party. If so, this is the funkiest Nuremberg trial I've ever heard. And what's he got against Singin' in the Rain? Did Debbie Reynolds step on his foot in a restaurant or something? I think what he's trying to say is "I don't want to be your cheerfully saccharine song-and-dance man anymore," but no one associates George Michael with expertly-composed Gene Kelly routines. Lyric could've used a re-write, but I'll let it slide. Carry on:
All we have to do now
Is take these lies and make them true somehow
All we have to see
Is that I don't belong to you, and you don't belong to me yeah yeah
Freedom! (I won't let you down)
Freedom! (I will not give you up)
Freedom! (Gotta have some faith in the sound)
You've gotta give for what you take (It's the one good thing that I've got)
Freedom! (I won't let you down)
Freedom! (So please don't give me up)
Freedom! ('Cause I would really, really love to stick around)
You've gotta give for what you take
And so we come to the critical question of our age: what is freedom? Is freedom the ability to do whatever you want? The ability to live without regret? The ability to release whatever music is floating your boat without the record company complaining about it? The ability to ignore public health experts and take a trip to the nail salon in the middle of a pandemic? Sometimes I wonder if freedom is simply a seductive illusion and the reality is that we're all trapped inside the prison of ill-defined George Michael lyrics. The second verse deftly touches on the existence of Andrew Ridgeley without shedding any meaningful light on his actual role in Wham!:
Heaven knows we sure had some fun, boy
What a kick just a buddy and me
We had every big-shot good time band on the run, boy
We were living in a fantasy
We won the race, got out of the place
I went back home, got a brand new face
For the boys on MTV
But today the way I play the game has got to change, oh yeah
Now I'm gonna get myself happy
Andrew Ridgeley was living in a fantasy, all right - the fantasy that he was doing something valuable in Wham! Hi-Yo! Also, I'm getting this mental picture of the duo's "big-shot good time" peers such as Duran Duran, Tears for Fears, and The Smiths literally running away from Wham!, and I have to chuckle ever-so-slightly. At any rate, the song's bridge might be my favorite section (musically, I certainly dig the key change followed by wah-wah guitars shifting maniacally across the stereo spectrum), because here is where George's dueling impulses of self-loathing and self-acceptance really manage to duke it out:
Well it looks like the road to heaven
But it feels like the road to hell
When I knew which side my bread was buttered
I took the knife as well
Posing for another picture
Everybody's got to sell
But when you shake your ass
They notice fast
And some mistakes were build to last
That's what you get (That's what you get)
That's what you get (I say that's what you get)
That's what you get (for changing your mind)
That's what you get for changing your mind
That's what you get
That's what you get (And after all this time)
I just hope you understand
Sometimes the clothes do not make the man
He's not whining, he's not deflecting, he's not claiming that he was some sort of "victim" who was "taken advantage of" by the business. He chose this path! He's admitting that he was deliberately complicit in the creation of the image that he no longer wishes to perpetuate. To tear it all down is a massive pain in the ass, but, as he says, "that's what you get for changing your mind." He's cool with it. He's ready to deal with the blowback. How should we interpret the "I took the knife as well" line? Is he suggesting that the pain of making mindless '80s synth-pop was akin to the pain of being stabbed in the chest with a bread knife? Or is he suggesting that he took that bread knife in his hands and proceeded to stab his rivals with it on his way to the top? Jesus, who knew the Wham! experience was so violent?
In the end, one last round of the chorus grants George his true vocal freedom, as he lets rip in the fade-out with the kind of liberating ad libs that were the man's forte: "You got to give-uh-whatcha-give-uh-whatcha-give-uh-whatcha taaaayyyy-aaaayy-aaake ... yeah! You got to give-uh-whatcha-give-uh-whatcha-give ... may not be what you want from me, just the way it's got to be ... lose the face, now ... got the new, got the new ..." I'm fairly certain that not even Nelson Mandela, when his 27 years in captivity finally ended, sounded quite as pumped as George does right there.
So after a brief Google search, I found this article written shortly after George's death, from NPR's Linda Holmes, titled "The Individualism and Fist-Pumping of George Michael's 'Freedom '90'," and now that I've read it, I kind of wonder if I could have saved myself the effort of composing this blog post (but nah). To summarize Holmes's take: "Freedom '90 is not just an expression of individuality, but an expression of vulnerability and dependency as well ... and it also grooves like a motherfucker. Which is kind of what I said. Excerpts:
It begins with just the beat, then the bass and keyboards, and the first appearance of a chant that will recur over and over: "I will not let you down/I will not give you up." It's a song of independence, but its first declaration is of mutuality: a promise and a vow, a sort of "I offer" and "I want" rhythm. Then: "Gotta have some faith in the sound/it's the one good thing that I've got." So there's "faith" wordplay, and there's the idea that artists are not just in business, even when they're pop musicians. Again, while it's declaring independence, it's also admitting vulnerability: part of the reason to preserve your artistic and personal sense of self goes well beyond principle – you do it because to do otherwise can make you desperate and lonely. Then a shift: "I will not let you down/so please don't give me up/'cause I would really really love to stick around."
"Please don't give me up." Please. Very often, you find a song of independence – of freedom – steeped in a kind of "I don't need anybody and I don't care what anybody thinks" autonomous flippancy, structured like a kiss-off. This is the opposite...
When "Freedom '90" rolls into the chorus, it's with the same commitment to mutuality that showed up in the opening: "All we have to do now/is take these lies and make them true somehow." It would have been so easy for this song to be about his freedom, and to just say, "All I have to do now/is take these lies and make them true." But both the use of "we" and the trailing "somehow" – the latter is sung almost on a sigh – make it a song of commonality between a very famous pop star and the people who listen to him.
Yeah, what she said! What's powerful about the song is that George isn't just telling his audience to fuck off (although I kind of think he's doing that); rather, he's asking his audience to accept the "new" George. Indeed, many have read the song as the singer anticipating public reaction to a certain "secret" of his. Here's a quote on Wikipedia from an interview he gave in 2004: "By the end of the Faith tour I was so miserable because I absolutely knew that I was gay... I didn't suddenly want to come out. I wanted to do it with some kind of dignity. So I thought 'okay, you have to start deconstructing this whole image.' " Of course, being arrested by an undercover cop in a public restroom isn't exactly what I'd call "coming out with dignity," but hey, at least the sentiment was there.
And it looks like there was a semi-happy ending after all, because although it stalled at #28 in the UK (lord knows why), "Freedom '90" hit #8 in the US, and I actually remember hearing it a lot more on the radio than I heard "Praying for Time," even though that single hit #1, and basically, what I'm saying is, people loved the "new" George Michael just as much as the old one. Or rather, let me say that in the US, George may have won the battle but he lost the war, whereas in the UK, he lost the battle but won the war. Although his popularity never did wane in Britain, he only managed a few more hits in America after this one, and never did duplicate the success of the Faith era. Sure, George, you can have your "freedom" ... and take it back to Britain with you while you're at it.
OK, so, this video. Whenever my co-blogger Zrbo and I, in our younger years, got around to discussing the relatively overlooked works of the George Michael oeuvre, he would always express his admiration for "the awesome video for 'Freedom '90' with all the supermodels singing the lyrics!" Ironically, while I vividly recall seeing the "Praying for Time" video back in 1990 and finding it rather groundbreaking, although it seems like most people hardly mentioned that video in the years to follow, I have no recollection of seeing the "Freedom '90" video at the time, even though I've learned in retrospect that it was (and is) considered rather groundbreaking.
Here's the deal. Supermodels are generally not the types of celebrities I admire very much, although I'd probably date one if I could (on the other hand, who wants to deal with all that ego?). According to a slew of articles, the "Freedom '90" video "ushered in the era of the supermodel" or some nonsense like that. Am I supposed to ... celebrate this? Although I appreciate the way in which George Michael and David Fincher used the video to subvert viewers' expectations and to render explicit MTV's desire to turn every talented musician into a photogenic pin-up, part of me feels like the video has merely fed into our culture's obsession with superficial glamour while ostensibly attempting to critique it. Yeah, all right, I'm sounding like Professor Higglediggle here, but when half the comments underneath the video on YouTube are statements like "Linda, Christy, Naomi, Tatjana, Cindy all put the 'Super' into Supermodels. They don't make them like they used to!" and "When models were actually beautiful! Today....not so much," I just don't get it. These people rank supermodels the way I rank ... George Michael songs. But George Michael songs can be dark and intense and thoughtful; supermodels are just ... supermodels. Well, people love the video, and I can see why (here's an oral history from the New York Times if you'd like to learn more of the gritty backstory). But if it had featured, say, a series of skeletal gay men dying of AIDS lip-syncing "Freedom '90," now that would have had some real sting to it. Let's see what our fair professor has up his sleeve this time:
Failing to circumnavigate the overworked codes of communal empowerment, Michael avoids using his accumulated symbolic capital to (re)contextualize the repressed "other," instead appealing to the politics of substitution as style. His glottal cry of "freedom" never transcends the sententious dualism implicit in his assemblage of (homo)erotic formations, ignoring Foucault's analyses of sovereign and disciplinary power as formulated in Discipline and Punish. For the viewer, the "freedom" suggested by the reductive co-optation of the "supermodel construct" in the music video serves as a non-subjective reminder of that viewer's physical inferiority. Michael's attempt to "free" himself from his creative history only reinforces his subservient position ("To win the race, a prettier face") per the culture industry that birthed him.
SERIOUS. This song is so SERIOUS. You've heard of Curious George? Well how about Serious George? And if people didn't like Serious George? Then you know what? Maybe George didn't feel like being their kind of pop star. He didn't need no Man in the Yellow Hat buying his damn music.
My family didn't have MTV in our cable package back in 1990, but somehow I must have caught the "Praying for Time" video on another, less expensive channel. Apparently it was a video so arresting, even those lowly network channels knew they had to broadcast it at some point. You know the video for "One More Try," where George is just standing there in a gothic-looking apartment for six minutes and virtually nothing happens, but it's mesmerizing anyway? The video for "Praying for Time" is like the video for "One More Try," except without the video. Forget George Michael (if you were hoping to catch a glimpse of The Bearded One, pull up a chair 'cause it might be a while); there isn't even any other nice stuff to look at. The entire video consists of the lyrics appearing and disappearing on a black screen. That's it. That's all she wrote. No if's, and's or but's. They say that if you stare long enough at this video, you'll begin to see stubble. Now, plenty of alternative acts, such as The Replacements and the Pixies, had turned their music videos into metaphorical middle fingers, but none of those acts were multi-platinum superstars, were they? With the video for "Praying for Time," George was all but saying to the record-listening public, "You want a video? Here's your fuckin' video."
Ten-year-old me thought this was the most brilliant concept anyone had ever conceived of in the history of popular entertainment.
Perhaps I'm mistaken, but I feel like, by this time, videos had steadily been growing more and more opulent, more and more expensive, more and more indulgent. By 1990, videos were such a "thing." Hell, if I recall correctly, MTV was airing "making of" documentaries about the making of music videos! Suddenly, along came a video that was so bare-bones, so basic, calling it a video was like calling a Hot Pocket a meal, or calling Monaco a country. The media and the gossip columnists and the hoi-polloi were all sitting around, as they did with every other mega-star of the era, wondering what could George Michael possibly be coming up with next? And he gave them ... the total opposite of that. With one simple gesture, he was essentially expressing to the unthinking masses, "Who gives a crap about 'the next George Michael video'? I've had it with all this 'blowing your mind with my next video' shit. Just listen to the fucking song, fer Chrissakes." A gesture which, ironically, blew my mind.
You see, the "Praying for Time" video was, in my tiny pop music world, that rarest of creatures: something I had never seen a recording artist do before. I was also, at that age, entirely unfamiliar with, say, John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band, Metal Machine Music, or Tusk. Every pop singer I'd ever encountered seemed to be desperately trying to give the people exactly what they wanted. As far as I was concerned, this video, and the "content" of the lyrics, meant one of two things: instant career suicide, or a complete reinvention that would take George's success to an entirely new level. It didn't end up being either of those things, but career context aside, I've always thought this was some good shit. "Praying for Time" is serious, all right - seriously awesome.
Now that I have listened (without prejudice) to pre-1980s pop music, I realize that, with its methodical acoustic chug, "Praying for Time" reeks of that solo John Lennon, "Instant Karma!"/"Mind Games"/"Happy Xmas (War Is Over)" vibe. George apparently gave the engineer one solitary instruction: "TREBLE. NEEDZ MOAR TREBLE." Seriously, you could blast this sucker in the next room and I wouldn't even feel it through the walls, that's how little bass there is. And ECHO. An entire Lennon solo album's worth of echo - on one song. George wanted to make it SNAP in your ears, like an infant's wail.
If I were in a less generous mood, I might suggest that the lyrics of "Praying for Time" betray the songwriter's unfamiliarity with a more philosophical or political style of writing. Sure, "One More Try" and "Kissing a Fool" successfully took his post-Wham! music in a more "adult" direction, but if "Praying for Time" had a subtitle, it would be "I Am An Important Artist Now." In places he seems a bit in over his head. "I guess somewhere along the way/He must have let us all out to play"? Let us all out to play? That sounds kind of ... awesome! I love playing! I think what George was trying to say was that, in the words of Trent Reznor, "God is dead/And no one cares/And if there is a hell/I'll see you there," but the lyric makes God sound like the universe's best PE teacher. "Your television takes a stand"? Pretty sure my television doesn't have any thoughts on AIDS or Apartheid, last time I checked. "And what was over there ... is over here"? Holy shit, stuff is there, then it's here, and I just can't handle how stuff keeps moving from there to here! (The surface banality of the lyric is arguably rendered comical by the massive chord change beneath the word "here"). Throughout the song I can practically hear George thinking, "OK, so how can I make this deep?" What rhymes with "yours"? How about "door"? Does "scream from behind your door" sound dramatic, even though it's kind of generic? Like his heroes Stevie Wonder and Bernie Taupin before him, I think he just shrugged and thought, "Eh, close enough." It's the kind of song that, if sung on the school playground, would have been easy to make raspberry noises at.
Yet given George's untimely passing, I think the song plays a bit differently now than it did in 1990, or even in 2015. Before, one was tempted to chuckle at our dear Georgios Kyriacos's sudden attempt to become Billy Bragg. But now, he sounds like an omniscient prophet of doom, howling from beyond the grave, damning us mere mortals for the foolishness of our ways. Now the lyrics come off as poignant, pointed, bitter, and uncompromising. "Charity is a coat you wear twice a year"? See, that's why I never give to charity at all: because at least no one can accuse me of pretending to care for appearance's sake. Frankly, it's hard not to love a US chart-topping single that suggests God has disowned all of humanity, as if he were the strict cantor father in The Jazz Singer ("I have no son!"). The YouTube comments section is littered with a thousand variations of "George was so ahead of his time," "This song could have been written today," and "Sadly this is still relevant." "Praying For Time" is like George Michael's own "Imagine": good before, but even better now that he's dead.
I think the chorus is what keeps the song from becoming a preachy diatribe from some rich pop star who has suddenly realized that he "cares." George doesn't pretend to have any answers other than to, in the words of Kurt Vonnegut, "behave decently in an indecent world." "It's hard to love," he sings, but that doesn't mean you should cease doing it. God may have stopped keeping score, but to George, that isn't permission to suddenly become an eager member of the "What's mine is mine and not yours" crowd. God may have stopped keeping score, you rich Yuppie tightwad, but George Michael certainly hasn't. "Wounded skies above": now there's an image for you. Notice how George doesn't himself say that "it's much, much too late," but that the wounded skies above are saying it, which suggests that he personally might disagree with the skies and that he still believes the human race can be saved. It takes some guts to disagree with the wounded sky, you know what I'm saying? I'm inclined to interpret the final line as George proposing a legal loophole to God's judgment, like the knight in The Seventh Seal trying to cheat death via a board game. "Hmm, so if the skies are saying that it's too late, maybe what we should be praying for isn't 'peace' or 'wisdom' or 'love' or any of that crap, but 'time.'" Whoa. Professor Higglediggle writes:
"Praying For Time" resituates the temporal intransigence of the cosmos in a post-Nietzschean framework, proposing the elasticity of human experience without undermining the value of what Heidegger referred to as "Dasien," or the "being for whom being is a question." Michael's declaration that "God's stopped keeping score" suggests an embrace of Schopenhauer's philosophical pessimism, but this tendency is immediately countered by the concept of "play," which (re)purposes Sartre's notion of man as "being condemned to be free" as a jest by a parental agent whose indifference renders the universe absurd, a concept promulgated by the track's music video which, in the words of Camus, illustrates "the confrontation between human need and the unreasonable silence of the world" with its intermittent flashes of language divorced from further visual embellishment, forcing the viewer to negate any inherent meaning and create his/her own ethical values in response to the confrontational void.
From Track One, Side One all the way up through "Monkey," one could not have exactly accused Faith of being an album lacking in top-tier material. Four #1 singles, a #2 single, some solid album cuts ("Hand to Mouth," "Hard Day") ... hell, I wouldn't have blamed Georgios if he'd just shaved that stubble, hung up the ol' leather jacket, and called it a day.
But no.
The man wasn't satisfied. He still needed to throw one more killer song onto his album - a song performed in the kind of style that no one in their right mind would have ever thought he would have been capable of mastering. Not just a ballad. Not just an adult contemporary ballad.
A standard.
Strap on that cummerbund, slip that valet a $100 bill, and check your coat at the door, because with "Kissing a Fool," you and George are about to spend an elegant evening uptown. Say hello to Georgios Connick, Jr.
As if Faith hadn't already been enough of a mega-blockbuster, career-redefining album, he slips in a little "Kissing a Fool" at the end and makes it even mega-er, even more re-defining-ing. "Kissing a Fool" was George's way of saying, "I can even do this, y'all." Here's my main thought: most of the material on Faith, while excellent, certainly sounds ... of its time. Let's face it: it's an album smothered in synth sauce. Most of it has managed, in my opinion, to also transcend its time, due to the passion and playfulness in his singing, the inherent melodic sturdiness of his songwriting, and the craft in the production.
But "Kissing a Fool" is another beast entirely. It's the Dorian Gray of George Michael songs. It still sparkles like the top of the Chrysler Building on a breezy autumn morning. Granted, it doesn't sound like a recording from the '50s, which I imagine was the primary vibe George was aiming for. But it sure doesn't sound like a recording from the '80s either. This could have been recorded for a Tony Bennett comeback album circa 1993, I'm thinking. It could have been recorded for one of those Rod Stewart Great American Songbook albums from the '00s. It could have been recorded bloody yesterday. In other words, he didn't just write a standard. He made it sound like a standard. For instance, when the horns come in toward the end, they don't sound like, say, "I Want Your Sex, Part II: Brass In Love" horns. They sound like snappy, full-bodied, swingin' supper club horns. The piano rings and shimmers around the stereo spectrum like the refracted light emanating from the candles presumably resting on top of it. And those vocals! The vibe on this track is so smoky, I feel like I'm getting cancer just listening to it.
"Kissing a Fool" was Faith's coup de grace. As the last jazzy notes of an electric guitar bring the track to close, one can almost feel the final remnants of Wham! firmly and irrevocably dissipating into the night air like the helpless victim of an Evanesco spell. How the single got to #5 in the U.S. I'm not entirely sure; who hadn't already bought the whole album at that point? Maybe they really needed the instrumental version on the B-side? And until our friends at Vevo get around to acquiring the rights to the video, I'll have to embed this version that features subtitles in Spanish. My favorite lyric in "Kissing a Fool" - excuse me, "Besando a un Loco" - has always been "La gente nunca puedes cambiar como piensan." Don't tell me I'm the only one. Also, notice how George uses his guitar as a literal prop. He doesn't even bother to pretend-strum until the end of the bridge. Anyone "fooled" by that faux-playing only deserves to be "kissed" by death. From Professor Higglediggle:
Michael iterates the codification of Shakespeare on the concluding track to Faith, twisting the accumulated symbolic capital of the Bard's oeuvre into the seemingly anodyne lounge jazz ballad "Kissing a Fool," a maladroit melange of interpretations of various "Fool" characters found in Shakespeare's canonical works. The opening couplet, "You are far/When I could have been your star" (re)positions Feste's promise in Twelfth Night, "What is love? 'Tis not hereafter/Present mirth hath present laughter" as an astrological farce, while the following lines, "You listened to people/Who scared you to death/And from my heart" re-contextualize the mocking plea of Falstaff, "Master Gower, if they become me not, he was a fool that/taught them me. This is the right fencing grace, my lord; tap for/tap, and so part fair" in Act II, Scene I of Henry IV, Part II. However, Michael appears to misunderstand, if nobly, the Fool's wry observation "The man that makes his toe/What he his heart should make/Shall of a corn cry woe/And turn his sleep to wake" in King Lear when he croons, "Strange that I was wrong enough/To think you'd love me too," although this might arguably be intended as a nod to Costard in Love's Labours Lost, rendering it less malapropos. Avoiding a reference to the Fool's smooch-laden banter in Twelfth Night ("What's to come is still unsure/In delay there lies no plenty/Then come kiss me, sweet and twenty/Youth's a stuff will not endure") may have either been a noble gesture of restraint on the singer's part, or an exclusion properly foolish.
So the "monkey" he's talking about in "Monkey" is the other guy's penis, right?
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.
Minimalism. It worked for Hemingway. It worked for Beckett. It worked for every cross-legged Japanese monk who ever jotted down a haiku in a bucolic spring garden. But what their brands of minimalism were clearly lacking ... was stubble.
"One More Try" is '80s pop music stripped to its barren, brutal core. There is nowhere to hide, no relief from the endless onslaught of Michaelian passion. All must bow to the unadorned intensity of the piece. "One More Try" is like George Michael's version of "In the Air Tonight" ... but sexier. It's George, an organ, a drum machine, and God, alone in a room, face to face, battling it out for the sanctity of one man's soul. And the drum machine is arguably winning.
Imagine the conversation at the record company when George handed this one in. "Nice George, it's really lovely, killer demo, so ... what's the final version going to sound like?"
"This is the final version."
Jaw, meet floor.
And it's nearly six minutes long! He practically dares the listener to lose patience. But I'm with you Georgie Boy, I'm with you to the bitter end. Frankly, when I was a kid, I probably did find this song a bit boring, but when I was a kid I also ate uncooked Top Ramen noodles with the MSG-laden flavor mix sprinkled in between the crevices, so what the fuck did I know? I'll tell you what I didn't know: I didn't know what true heartbreak was. Actually, even now I'm not sure I know what true heartbreak is. But what I know is that George knows.
I also know this: "One More Try" couldn't have skated by on such a sparse arrangement if it hadn't been, at its core, a fundamentally well-structured composition. Sure, production-wise, it sounds like a hit from 1988, but compositionally, this sucker could have been a hit in 1968. Think of what Otis Redding or Etta James might have done with it on a muggy summer night at Muscle Shoals. Do I even detect a little Pachelbel's "Canon In D" in the chord progression? Screw 1968; it could've even been a hit in 1688. Like the never-ending "Canon," "One More Try" circles and circles and circles without ever seeming capable of resolving its underlying tension, as a wary, bruised George pleads desperately with a potential new lover that he just isn't ready to love again, damn it, oh, fine, what the hell. Indeed, when the backing slows to an agonizing crawl in those last few seconds and George finally finds it within himself to open his wounded heart to humanity once more, it's like one of those moments at the end of a Bresson film; as with Michel in his jail cell at the end of Pickpocket, or the donkey in the field at the end of Au Hasard Balthazar, one senses all discord finally turning to harmony, and the work reaches an unexpected but entirely logical state of grace (sheesh, I'm starting to sound like Professor Higglediggle here). Note, also, that the very last lines are the only time George even sings the title of the song. He could have called it "Ain't No Joy For An Uptown Boy," but that wouldn't have quite captured the mood of the piece, I suppose.
Of course, Pachelbel and Bresson don't exactly ooze sultry R&B vibes. I can sit here and tell you how soulful "One More Try" is, but don't take my word for it: in addition to hitting #1 on the Billboard Hot 100, it also, somehow, some way, topped the Billboard R&B chart. And George Michael was many things, but one of those many things was not black. Look out, Hall & Oates.
I guess George was feeling cocky at this point, because when it came time to shoot the video, he decided to make it even more minimalist than the song itself. As the camera fades up, we find George sitting pensively in a dusty room, obscured in shadow, with a ghostly light pouring in through two stained glass windows behind him. And then the camera holds that shot. And holds it. And holds it.
And it's mesmerizing.
You can't turn away! There's not a single cut, and yet one feels an entire narrative of longing, doubt, regret, and hesitation unfolding before one's eyes. The viewer doesn't even get treated to a close-up of his singing, bearded visage until the 2:47 mark. Now that's balls. It probably took them about twenty minutes to film the video, and about ten minutes to edit it. I'll bet half the budget simply went to George's makeup. And why is there so much dust in the room? Did they think about vacuuming? Or maybe they could have just opened up one of those stained glass windows, you know, let a little air in. Wait. Maybe that grey haze is supposed to be George's aura. And why are the love seat and the floor covered with sheets? Is George squatting in someone else's posh London apartment? No, I've got it: they were trying to protect the upholstery from his continually dripping sexiness. Professor Higglediggle's analysis:
The boldly static image that opens the piece attempts to confront the psychologically dormant and/or sociologically neutered viewer with a (re)contextualized (re)creation of that very dormancy and impotence, partially echoing Warhol's antagonistic, neo-subversive Empire and Sleep, only lacking those works' intangible post-Brakhage elan. The artist's failure/refusal to properly decorate, light, or heat ("I'm so cold inside") his dwelling suggests his nominal inability to live within the capitalist framework of Thatcherite England, although the income generated by his music ironically further propagated the system he sought to oppose. Furthermore, Michael's toothless plea, "Cause teacher, there are things/That I don't want to learn" may be read as ineffective anti-authoritarian posturing, what Barthes referred to as Doxa, as opposed to the preferred Para-Doxa. However, his pseudo-rejection of this educational figure may be refer, in a Lacanian sense, to buried childhood trauma, given that the "last teacher [he] had made [him] cry."
The pop songs in which a male singer refers to his loved one as "baby" are too numerous to mention, but with "Father Figure," I think George Michael finally took this incestuous notion to its proper, logical conclusion.
George's musical achievements are many, but it's time to give credit where credit is due: although it faces stiff competition from the Police's "Don't Stand So Close to Me," Benny Mardones's "Into the Night," and Bruce Springsteen's "I'm On Fire," "Father Figure" may be the statutory rape anthem of the '80s. Despite George's proclamation that he has "had enough of crime," I would surmise that there is one crime he still hasn't quite had enough of. In fact, not only is he willing to be this underage girl's (or boy's?) "father," but also, potentially, her "preacher," her "teacher" - indeed, "anything" she might have in mind. Anything? How about cowboy, construction worker ... maybe a cop?
But don't misunderstand me. The vaguely predatory nature of "Father Figure" is not a bug, but a feature. It gives what could have been a bland ballad a distinctively menacing edge. Take the incestuous jailbait out of "Father Figure," and what have you got? Nothing. Nada. Bupkus. You've got a Whitney Houston album track. It needs its pubescent longing.
Or maybe not, given that the melody is arguably the most hauntingly seductive one that George ever came up with. Indeed, "Father Figure" is George Michael's chief contribution to what my eight-year-old self dubbed the Summer of '88's "Egyptian Thing." No snake charmer from the Arabian Nights could have conjured up a synth riff as beguilingly hypnotic as the one that first appears between 0:09 and 0:18. Hey, you ride that camel, George, that's what I say. You ride that camel all night long. One has to admit, Georgios the Greek sets quite the Mediterranean mood here: gentle "cymbal" taps to start with, then two "bass drum" beats followed by finger snaps and some sort of "sandpaper" percussion effect. The spell is so enchanting that the listener may not even notice the tinkling piano that enters at the start of the second verse, but it's what those in the business call a "nice touch."
The chorus almost shows up without warning, as a gang of female gospel vocalists pop up and make the religious undertones of the words "father" and "preacher" just a tad more explicit. Those random session pros sure have got the jailbait "spirit," all right. They've got it so bad, in fact, that they practically drown out George's "lead" singing. Seriously, just listen closely to that initial chorus. For a #1 hit, this is kind of a ... weird mix, you know? George sort of "whisper-grunts" the phrases "it would make me ... very happy ... please let me" in counterpoint to the back-up singers, as if he's afraid of getting caught with his hands in his teen sexpot's pajama bottoms.
Suddenly, during the bridge, the mood takes a turn for the intense, with the melody shifting dramatically as George really, really tries to convince his underage object of conquest that she should totally, totally trust him: "So when you remember the ones who-have-lied/Who said that they cared but then laughed-as-you cried/Beautiful darling, don't think of meeeeeeee/because all I ever wanted..." And BOOM: the main melody returns reassuringly, along with some smoldering Spanish guitar, and, frankly, if I were this girl, at this point I'd sleep with the guy no matter what our age gap might be.
By the start of the third bridge, the intensity seems to have died down again, as the back-up singers coo "Greet me with the eyes of a child," but then George really lets it rip (with generous application of echo) on "Just hold on! Hold on! And I won't let you go-ohhhhh, mah baby!" This time through the chorus, he is right out in front and not ashamed to hide his taboo inclinations. All that pent-up longing for a Lolita to call his own comes pouring out at 5:03 ("I will be yoah-hooooe!") and 5:06 ("fahhh-thuuuuh!"), culminating in the magnificently shameless and undisguised exhortation "I'll your dadd-ay, whoa!" All the instrumentation recedes as George, alone in the dark, puts one last little flourish on this bad boy: "Till the end of ... tyyyme," pausing before the word "time" as if he's glancing around for the nearest alleyway to duck through. The Egyptian synth riff takes a final bow, and the curtain closes. For one more evening at least, this devious patriarch is safe from society's disapproving censure.
I suppose I'm playing up the predatory nature of the song a bit much, because honestly, "Father Figure," like any classic '80s ballad, can be interpreted in a number of ways, as the video certainly demonstrates. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you ... the sexiest cab driver in the history of film. Imagine if Travis Bickle had been sexy instead of psychotic. Let's see how this sounds: "You talkin' to me ... honey?" Kinda works? George's co-star in this sordid affair was one Tania Coleridge, later known as Tania Harcourt-Cooze. Initially I assumed Tania was just some random supermodel with a boring background, but whoa, was I off. From Wikipedia:
The daughter of Major William Duke Coleridge, 5th Baron Coleridge of Ottery St Mary, a Major in the Coldstream Guards, and his first wife Everild Tania Hambrough, she is directly related to the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge ... Born in Kenya, she followed her father's British Army career until her parents divorced in 1977 when she was 11 ... Completing a fine arts diploma in London, she joined the punk rock revolution, and would hang out on the Kings Road, Chelsea ... Having met Willie Harcourt-Cooze in her late teens, she married the Venezuelan-based businessman in 1993. Using the funds from the sale of his London flat and his family's money, the couple purchased a 1,000 acres (400 ha) cocoa hacienda in Choroni, and planted more than 50,000 Criollo cocoa trees ... She came to public prominence again in 2008 with the airing of the fly-on-the-wall documentary, Willie's Wonky Chocolate Factory, centred on her husband's efforts to be one of the first Britons since the Cadbury family to grow, import and produce their own chocolate.
Hold on a second. We've got Victorian poet ancestors, Kenyan births (take that Obama!), Venezuelan chocolate magnates, pun-laden British documentary titles ... and that's not even mentioning the video for "Father Figure"! I guess dating a cab driver really would have been slumming it for this girl. I love the moment in the video at 0:27 where the cab comes into view and behind the wheel we see ... George Michael. But not just any George Michael, it's the "iconic" George Michael: sunglasses, stubble, crucifix earrings, leather jacket ... it's the Faith-era George in all his flawless glory, and he's driving a fucking cab. Consider my disbelief ... suspended.
At first it's not really clear if these two know each other. We see George in his bedroom, tacking magazine cuttings of Tania up onto his wall in a shrine-like manner, then we see Tania backstage with her pasty white rivals, prepping for a runway show. Suddenly, BOOM, at 1:53, George starts getting his hetero on, and you realize that these two are in more than just a "driver/passenger relationship" if you know what I mean. Shots of their not-at-all-fictional lovemaking are juxtaposed with shots of Tania strutting her stuff for the paparazzi in some type of business suit with a ... cone bra/corset thingy? Whatever she's wearing, the point is, she's got "it." But you know where she gets her "it" from? Her secret cab driver boyfriend, that's where. At 2:11, the camera pans across her brightly-lit dressing room, where she's being delicately, attentively dressed (or undressed?), and then gradually wanders into the shadows, where George lurks mysteriously, lighting a cigarette, giving her the hidden mojo she needs without dragging her down into his rough-and-tumble milieu.
Later, a charming photographer tries to coax the right "look" from Tania, while George surreptitiously peaks through the door in the back (at 3:00). I mean, the photographer's cute and sensitive and all, but he can't give her the animalistic passion that Mr. Cabbie can. Sometimes the pressure can gnaw at the most poised professional, as the brief "freak out" montage beginning at 4:41 illustrates: Tania slaps George, pushes her photographer, and even tosses her lipstick apparatus onto the table in supremely diva-esque fashion. God, life as a supermodel is so hard, you know? But ultimately, she gets back out there on the runway, as the faceless crowd greets her adoringly. Little do they know about the brutal, private agonies, about the sacrifice it takes for her to get there, but George knows. At 5:07 there's a brief shot of George with his head against the pillow, opening his eyes, as if he's saying, "Don't forget me, baby, I made you who you are." Finally, at 5:18, while she's out on that runway working what God gave her, she spots her lover (ex-lover?) in the audience, standing there anonymously, emotionlessly. But sometimes, nothing need be said. A glance can say it all.
As always, Professor Higglediggle offers a rather opaque take:
Often read as a vigorous embrace of the commodity scientism of patriarchal attachment, "Father Figure" can potentially be (re)read as a denial of the overworked codes of pre-sexualized discourse, albeit from within a heterocentric framework. The singer's rejection of the pre-existing, pseudo-hegemonic order ("Sometimes love can be mistaken for a crime") acts as a post-Nietzschean declaration of liberated ideals ("Anything you have in mind"). The interstitial suggestions of ephebophilia ("put your tiny hand in mine," etc.) sit uneasily against the singer's inequitable occupation (cab driver) and desire to mediate the taboo of underage courtship with filial duty.
In October 1987, the world was waiting for words of healing, words of insight. The globe cried out for a single phrase that would reach into the souls of the lost children like a thousand beams of holy divination. One man was ready to rise to the occasion. One man had been to the wilderness and had returned with the wisdom that spoke to the age's deepest wounds. Here ... were this man's words:
"I've got to have faith-uh-faith-uh-faith-ah!"
Full confession: I think the compositional elements of "Faith" are strong. The lyrics, if not overly-complex, are effective and memorable. The chord progression is pleasing. The usage of the Bo Diddley beat in a dance-pop context is surprising and fresh. I think the song deserved to be a big hit.
However.
I've always sort of vaguely felt that "Faith" doesn't quite ... groove the way it should. It doesn't quite move the way it should. In other words, I'm not sure it was recorded as well as it could have been. It's too stiff. It's too meek. I sensed this as a kid. I sensed it when I listened to Faith in the late '90s. I sense it today. I recognize that George was aiming for a rockabilly "pastiche" that wouldn't necessarily be "actual rockabilly", and yet ... the song doesn't ... rock enough. It sounds like he just recorded a demo version with a cheap drum machine on it and thought, "Eh, good enough." With a ballad like "One More Try," you can get away with that, but sometimes you need to actually rock to do a rock song, you know? I feel like "Faith" should sound more like, say, Queen's "Crazy Little Thing Called Love." Now there's a rockabilly pastiche that really rocks. Instead, it came out more like an off-brand "Footloose." For instance, when some actual guitars show up for an actual, supremely twangy guitar solo in the middle, it makes me think, "Yeah! That's what this baby needs right here." In summary, I feel like the song was sort of a missed opportunity, in a way that his other big hits were not. But I'm not too worked up about it.
And I certainly can't complain about the vocals. George was one of those rare singers who could inject a bit of silliness into his singing without undermining the emotional intensity of the performance. My two favorite bits would have to be the "Bey-bae-uh!" at 1:50, followed by the "Mm-beyyyyyyyyyyyy-bae-uh!" at 1:59. Too bad nobody bothered to hire a drummer.
Then there is the infamous video, which may be better known by its alternate title, "George Michael's Butt." Yes, George Michael's butt appears in a starring role. If your idea of a great music video is one that features many, many shots of George Michael's jiggling hind quarters, then this, my friends, is your Citizen Kane. Granted, there are also numerous shots of the singer's other body parts, including his legs, his crotch, his glove-encased hand (question: Can you play guitar with a glove on your hand?), and even, occasionally, his face. My understanding is that George is extremely sexy in this video, but I'll have to take heterosexual women and homosexual men at their word. I feel like the video might have been just one big opportunity for George to turn himself on. Question: Do you think George Michael jerked off to his own videos?
Here's what I want to know: what's with the leather jacket that says "BSA" on it? I associate that acronym with a certain youth group that was not terribly fond of men of George's particular persuasion. Talk about a subversive political statement slipping under the radar! In the end, the budget for the "Faith" video must have stood in stark contrast to the amount of money that the song ultimately earned, as the tune with a video consisting of George Michael's butt wiggling in a white room next to a jukebox became the #1 Billboard hit of 1988. Perhaps the blow-dried record label skeptics, viewing the rough cut in an air-freshened conference room, just needed to have a little more ... "faith" in their recording artist's butt. Professor Higglediggle writes:
Michael had confronted the hyperpotent reductivism of Judeo-Christian dialectics in prior works ("Last Christmas," "I Knew You Were Waiting (For Me)") but with "Faith" he (re)contextualized the (pre)existing symbolic domain in slightly more bold, if equally problematic, terms. With its conflation of the spiritual and carnal, the song situates itself in an almost Augustinian duality, Michael observing "When that love comes down without devotion" he recognizes the papal necessity of "showin' [her/him] the door," although he acknowledges the binary co-optation of gender norms with the doubtful aside "Well it takes a strong man baby," as if the "strong man" and his own marginalized position were ethically incompatible. The video renders this moral failure in stark visual terms by contrasting the spectral symbol of the old order (the metal crucifix dangling from Michael's right ear lobe) with the earthly symbol of the new order (Michael's gluteus maximus).
If, after the dissolution of Wham!, George Michael had intended the record-buying public to begin taking his music more seriously, I'm not sure "I Want Your Sex" was exactly the way to go.
I like "I Want Your Sex," but not because I think it's a particularly good song. I like it because ... well, because it is hilarious.
First of all, the title is hilarious. No one says, "I want your sex." Seriously, who says that? One might say, "I want sex," or "I want your body," but no one would say "I want your sex." I don't know if it's incorrect English, but I do know that it's something no one says. It would be like saying, "I want your aerobics," or "I want your finance." "Sex" is not a thing that belongs to a person. One does not "possess" sex.
Or perhaps what we have here ... is George Michael ... completely redefining ... what sex is.
Most people know "I Want Your Sex" from its inclusion on Faith, but the song actually made its first appearance on the soundtrack to Beverly Hills Cop II, which my family purchased in the summer of 1987, and which is how I initially became, well, "exposed" to the song's many charms. To be fair, I haven't revisited the soundtrack album since then, but from what I recall, the quality of the Beverly Hills Cop II soundtrack bore about the same relationship to the original Beverly Hills Cop soundtrack as the quality of the actual Beverly Hills Cop II movie did to its predecessor. Who can forget James Ingram's "Better Way," Corey Hart's "Hold On," or The Jets' "Cross My Broken Heart"? The Pointer Sisters were the only act to return for a second tour of duty, this time contributing "Be There," which probably wasn't as "there" as "Neutron Dance" was. I remember being extremely enamored with Bob Seger's "Shakedown," which became the #1 hit that probably even Bob Seger doesn't remember having, but I heard it again a few years ago and I can't say I entirely agree with the assessment of my seven-year-old self. I remember my brother and I deciding to perform "dance routines" to each song on the album in our tiny living room. Somehow or other, I got the short end of the stick and had to come up with a routine for "I Want Your Sex." Our father rolled his eyes as he viewed it and said, "I don't know if this is such a great idea." I managed to half-heartedly trudge my way through all four minutes and forty seconds of squeakiness.
I assume the sound at the start of the song is a synthesizer, and not, as I'm tempted to believe, two banana slugs copulating, but I could be mistaken. The squeaking noises continue throughout the piece, as if someone was standing in the corner continually squeezing mud between his hands, and recording it. The verse flirts with a decent melody, but I feel like that sense of musical decency goes out the window once the chorus shows up. The bridge is actually somewhat promising, and suggests that a very exciting, passionate, anthemic chorus is on the way:
I swear I won't tease you, won't tell you no lies
I don't need no bible, just look in my eyes
I've waiting so long, baby, now that we're friends
A man's got his patience, and here's where mine ends
And then suddenly, we hear a very bored, dispassionate George Michael, in a supremely unexciting lower register, speak-singing the words "I want your sex," followed by, I believe, a long string of farting noises. This is where his patience ends? You'd think he could have waited for something a little better, you know? To me, this song is about as sexy as a night out at Hooter's, but hey, maybe it works for you.
Right around the end of the second chorus, things truly start to get weird. Follow along with me if you can:
2:23: Just business as usual, until George pauses after "I want your," only to unleash an emphatic "sex ... sex! Ow!"
2:28: The squeak returns with a vengeance, and we're treated to a solo by what sounds like an ... "imitation Asian gong" synth setting?
2:49: A cluster of sped-up Georges attempt to sell the listener on the myriad benefits of sex, helpfully explaining that "it's natural" and "it's chemical," when suddenly they are interrupted by another, regular-speed George who apparently is finding the sped-up mini-Georges' approach much too subtle and simply grunts "Let's do it!"
2:54: The pitch-altered Georges continue, as if we weren't already convinced, adding "it's logical" and "habitual," and once again unaltered George chimes in with an impatient "Can we do it-uh?"
2:59: The chorus of Georges is clearly running out of selling points, pointing out that "it's sexual" (I think we knew this already), but then pivoting into a different pattern with "but most of all, sex is something that we should do," which is followed by an unexpectedly deep-voiced man who I assume just crawled up from the basement of whatever S&M castle we've somehow found ourselves trapped in, adding "Sex is something for me and you." Who would have thought!
3:07: Now we arrive at what might arguably be the "climax" of the interlude. The gathering of Georges, by this time appearing at a mixture of pitches, surmises that "Sex is natural, sex is good/Not everybody does it, but everybody should/Sex is natural, sex is fun," then a lone George pokes his head in to point out that "Sex is best when it's" ... and finally deep-voiced George finishes the thought with an emotionless "one-on-one." "I see," said the blind man.
3:47: The comparatively tranquil bongo jam that follows is broken up by, if I'm not mistaken, George dry heaving repeatedly in the left channel ("hu-ah!"), which is invariably followed by another George in the center channel chanting "sex," and all the while, lead vocalist George explains to the object of his affection that "I'm not your father/I'm not your brother/talk to your sister" and then he really kicks it into Whitney Houston territory with " I am a luv-ahh-ahh! Whoooo-hooo-hooo-euh!" which he finally punctuates with a James Brown-ish "Ow!" and the immortal "C-C-C-C-C-C-Come own-ah!"
4:23: After a little rap (a genre to which George was no stranger, of course), he really lays it all out with "Don't you think it's time you had sex! With! Meee-ayyy-uh!"
4:38: Finally, the piece comes to a fitting conclusion with a last "Mmmm have sex! With! Meee-ayyy-uh!" as the man praying to the porcelain goddess reappears to add another (completely necessary) "hu-ah!" while George ties a nice little ribbon around the whole enchilada with one more "C-C-C-C-C-C-Come own-ah!"
Naturally, George sat in the studio, listened to the playback, and concluded, "You know what? I think the world needs two more versions of this." "Rhythm Two: Brass In Love" manages to be more tasteful and yet, in my opinion, more boring. It's sort of what I imagine would've happened if George had asked Phil Collins to do a remix version. The addition of horns feels gimmicky. I mean, if he wanted to bring a Stax/R&B feel to the piece, he shouldn't have kept using the same crappy drum machine from "Part 1." "Rhythm Three: A Last Request" might actually be, from a purely musical standpoint, the most palatable version, with some decent keyboard work, some noirish trumpet, and the drum machine setting from Gregory Abbott's "Shake You Down," but again, I feel it lacks the comedic edge of "Part 1."
The video was rather "controversial" in its day but, watching it now, I kind of have to wonder, "For what?" Too much stubble? Naked feet being doused with water? Excessive use of red blindfold? This thing is 50 Shades of Tame. From Wikipedia: "The music video, directed by Andy Morahan, featured Michael's then-girlfriend Kathy Jeung to emphasize that he was in a monogamous relationship; at one point, he is shown using lipstick to write the words 'explore' and 'monogamy' on her back." Two questions: 1) His ... girlfriend? Just how serious were they? I mean, if he's not that interested in her, maybe we can trade? 2) "Monogamy"? I'll tell you the first thing that pops into my head when I hear this song: monogamy! It's so obvious! How could anyone miss it? Final thought: what do you think he did with that red lipstick once the cameras stopped rolling? Professor Higglediggle's take:
With his contribution to a reductive, Dionysian symbol of post-blockbuster disjunction (Beverly Hills Cop II), Michael sought to subvert the symbolic capital of monogamy through the interpretive framework of libidinal electro-funk. His declaration "I don't need no bible" serves to sever the act of lovemaking from its codified familial purpose, while his question "What do you consider pornography?" forces the listener to situate her/his (re)conception of the procreational drive in stark opposition to Puritan mythos. Michael's experimental usage of lipstick does much to undercut his circuitous effort to establish a sexualized element of play, however, subtly reinforcing the codified status of female marginalization at the hands of the cosmetics industry and highlighting his partner's lack of sexual agency.
Here's a sentence from 1986 written by no one ever:
"Can George Michael survive without Wham!?"
The man certainly had a lot to prove. And in order to prove it, he needed to find a heavy hitter, a big timer, a game-changer, someone who could show the world that he didn't need to coast on the back of Andrew Ridgeley. Someone who could, you know, actually sing with him.
Let me propose to you an idea for a duet. Two titans of soul music, joining forces to ascend the Church Spire of the Billboard Hot 100, to achieve a musical height together that would be unthinkable alone. But they couldn't be just any two singers. We're talking about assembling a dream duo of soul here. How about Aretha Franklin? Yeah. That's a good start. Can't go wrong with the Queen of Soul. OK, so Aretha Franklin, and ... who's the male gonna be? Let's see here. Al Green? Ray Charles? Sam Moore? Ronald Isley? Try none of the above.
How the hell did George Michael end up singing a duet with Aretha Franklin? And here's the more pertinent question: how did that duet end up being so fucking awesome?
Seriously. It would be like James Brown doing a duet with Madonna. It couldn't work. It shouldn't work.
It totally worked.
Aretha doesn't mess around. "Like ah warr-yah-that-fights ... and wins the baaaa-tuhl ... I knowwww the taste of vic-tahhry." This, my friends, this is the taste of victory. "Though I went-through-some-nights ... consuuuuuuumed by the shadows ..." She's feelin' it, she's definitely feelin' it. What have you got, Georgios?
"Mmmmmmm somehow I made it through the heartache, yes I did, I escaped/I found my way out of the darkness, I kept my faith." Not bad, Brit Boy! In case anyone doubted whether or not George truly kept his faith, Aretha assures us with a supportive "I know you did." How the hell would she know? She'd probably just met him!
Even so, the moment she met him, I'm guessing the first thing she did was take him to church, because on the chorus, Aretha and George climb up on that pew and raise their hands to the sky:
When the river was deep
I didn´t falter
When the mountain was high
I still believed
When the valley was low
It didn´t stop me
I knew you were waiting for me
Can I get an "Amen"? Favorite ad-libs:
2:29: Aretha's "Whoahhhh-ahhhh!"
2:54: Aretha does a melismatic "Whooo-hooo-uh-ooooh" which George follows with a gutteral "I knewwwww you were waitin'"
3:04: Aretha really lets it all hang out now with an "I didn't faltaaaahhh, Lawd!" while George throws in an authoritative "When-the-val-ley-was-low"
3:22: George really reaches back for "When the mountaaaaaaain was hi-iiiiigh" and I can just imagine Aretha giving him the side-eye and thinking, "What do you think you're doin' honey" because she barely reaches back for an "Ahhhhhhh! When the valley was lowwwww"
3:38: George emits a simple "Yeahhh" but Aretha smothers it with a rising "Whuuuuuuhh-ahhhhh! Uhhhh-Yeah!" which starts at the very tippy tippy-toes of George's feet and ultimately lands on the moon by the time she's done with it
3:44 George hits a nice groove with "Ohhhh-I sti-yillll believe" (OK, we got it, you believe), then Aretha gets masculine on his ass with a growling "You know it couldn't stop me, no," which George punctuates with a forceful "No"
3:52: At this point I suspect George is just riffing on whatever the fuck Aretha seems to be doing; She shouts "Someday!" so he shouts "Someway!, then she shouts "Someplace!" so he shouts "Somehow!," which seems to have settled it. What is this, the Jets and the Sharks? Where's Tony and Maria when you need them?
"I Knew You Were Waiting (For Me)" managed to do what few hits have done before or since. It managed to unite eight different audiences at once: black and white, male and female, gay and straight, British and American. A record executive couldn't have drawn up more of a sure-fire hit if he'd generated some sort of "focus group hit record algorithm" in a state-of-the-art lab. Naturally, the song hit #1 in both the US and UK, making George the first artist in Britain whose first three singles all peaked at #1, which means that, just as Tom Brady's five Super Bowl rings clearly make him the greatest quarterback of all time, George Michael is clearly the greatest British singer of all time.
Of course, "Careless Whisper" and "A Different Corner" were still quasi-Wham! songs, so the video for "I Knew You Were Waiting (For Me)" was George's first true opportunity to present a new "solo" image to the public, and while the mountain of expectations may have been high, Lord, he didn't falter. That's right, it was time for ... the leather jacket, sunglasses, earrings, and six millimeter stubble. At first he enters a dark, cavernous room with a giant screen on the wall (did every record label have one of those lying around?), and he stares up at footage of Aretha. Uh-oh. Don't tell me this was another one of those deals where the producers couldn't work out the artist's schedules and had to film their bits separately. Come on, we need some hot George on Aretha action here! A full two-and-a-half minutes go by until we finally see - yes! - George slide into the frame with Aretha. See? I knew they were waiting to show me that they'd made it to the same set at the same time.
Suddenly the screen in the background starts showing images of Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrill, and I'm thinking, whoa, that's ballsy. You guys really want to be comparing yourselves to Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell, eh? And then the screen starts showing images of Sonny and Cher, and I'm thinking, OK, that's a little more appropriate - if anything, sort of a downward comparison. I would put George Michael and Aretha Franklin right in the middle: not as great as Marvin and Tammi, but better than Sonny and Cher. Yes, better than Sonny and Cher, even though George and Aretha only recorded one duet ever, and Sonny and Cher recorded hundreds. Look at it this way: no bad songs!
Let's turn, once again, to Professor Higglediggle for a more academic analysis:
Michael's presence of "whiteness" acts as an ethnomusicological co-opting of Franklin's authentic "otherness," which serves to situate her Africanist transnationalism merely as a reductivist codification of "soul." In a perhaps unintended parallel, Franklin's heterogeneity serves to recontextualize Michael's ambiguous phallic capital under a rubric of mediated familial cohesion. By consenting to Michael's reification, Franklin doubles as Michael's African-American "beard," while simultaneously essentializing the British homosexual white male fantasy of "being able to hold one's own" with an "American soul legend," a fantasy which can only be realized in the figmental realm of audience formation, the lyric's invocation of sacred Judeo-Christian imagery (e.g. "river," "valley,") serving to circumvent the repressive inequity of the pairing.
