RIP George Michael

Some thoughts about GM in chronological order:

1985: "Freedom" ultimately became my pre-solo Wham! jam. Make It Big was one of the first vinyl LPs that I made my parents buy for me from Caldor.

1986: My mom lost her shit over "I'm Your Man" and included it on at least 2 of her driving mixtapes. I somehow acquired "The Edge Of Heaven" 45. The aforementioned was basically my Wham! canon. I had no knowledge of "Last Christmas" until probably high school, and (incorrectly as I'd discover) no other Wham! singles registered on my radar as canon.

1987: God, what a year for blockbusters. Hysteria, Kick, Bad, Appetite. As far as immediate artistic cred is concerned, the only other late-'80s blockbuster besides Faith to claim an "Album Of The Year" Grammy was U2's The Joshua Tree, but only Faith managed all of this PLUS being named SPIN's 14th greatest album of all time in April 1989.

With all this mind mind, it's surprising his peak only lasted throughout the Faith cycle. But still, he was among the giants - enough that his poster made it through several seasons in the kids' bedroom on Full House.



1990: "Freedom '90" initially felt like he was officially a career artist. The "Unplugged" version of this song was arguably the best out of the 4 pre-taped live videos for the MTV10 special in August 1991.



In retrospect, as a casual George fan, "Freedom '90" feels more like his final huge artistic statement, although I know diehards will hugely disagree with this. But from this perspective, that doesn't necessarily feel like a bad thing.

1990 was fucking weird though. In a year with such huge event video premieres as "Vogue," "Janie's Got A Gun" and "Escapade," "Freedom '90" only made it to #41 on MTV's year-end countdown.

"Too Funky" was '92 and his inescapable Elton John collab dominated Top 40 stations in early '93. By this point, he was still only 29 years old.

Sadly, we didn't keep up as much after that.

There's a few old George Michael posts from the more exciting years of TMK, but pretty much everything we wrote about him is really embarrassing.

Here, we wrote about a similarity that we noticed between Kanye's production in Drake's "Find Your Love" and Wham's "Everything She Wants."
http://tastemykidsblog.blogspot.com/2011/06/retroactive-drake-posting-regarding.html

Here's when "Freedom '90" was named our #11 Guilty Pleasure song of the '90s.
http://tastemykidsblog.blogspot.com/2010/03/90s-guilty-pleasures-11-george-michael.html

And perhaps most embarrassingly, here's a review of the original "Freedom" where we mistake its ultra-sugariness for a proud declaration of gay sexuality:
http://tastemykidsblog.blogspot.com/2011/12/80s-guilt-02-wham-freedom-1984.html

retroactive Drake posting regarding summer 2010 jam

We sorta forgot about this until just recently, but a while back we posted about 1 or 2 production references in Drake's big hit "Find Your Love" from last summer and it was kind of killing us that we couldn't place the specific homage or reference, although it was pretty clear that it was something pop from the 80's... And now several months after the fact, long after the last week this Drake track was charting on Billboard, we're happy to announce that we finally figured out one of those 2 references...

Here's the Drake track (I know getting nostalgic for 11 months ago is a strange concept, but it happens...) .. This is referring to the overall keyboard tones but more specifically the transition from the end of the 2nd chorus going back into verse 3 which happens between 1:29 and 1:34...



And we believe this to be referencing Wham's "Everything She Wants" from the Make It Big LP, which hit #1 on the U.S. Billboard charts in early June of 1985.. A similar keyboard patch is used to transition from chorus back into verse at 1:51 and then once again in mid-verse at 2:07...



This is definitely the main reference out of the 2 we found, and unfortunately the 2nd less prominent reference has escaped our memory at the moment... we'll be looking into this for a future posting...

90's Guilty Pleasures #11: George Michael "Freedom '90" (1990)

There's a certain category of hit single that is among my absolute favorites, where a song's complexity stretches beyond simply verse, chorus and bridge. In some cases, these songs include a pre-chorus, post-chorus, multiple bridges, and/or segmented verses of some sort. It's the songwriter's attempt to stretch the boundaries of what's capable in charting pop music, to see how far the flow can possibly last while keeping the listener's attention. And when it works, it normally succeeds in helping to separate the artists from the pop-stars. As far as I can tell, the first hit song of this category was "Oh! Pretty Woman." It was perfected by "Good Vibrations," and the most recent example (as of March 2010) was "Bad Romance."

I find it revealing that George Michael would choose such complexity, with a 6-minute string of one undeniable hook after another, as his confession to the world of wanting to break free from record companies, while secretly also confessing his sexual orientation. This was something he really wanted his fans to hear, giving even more meaning to the album title Listen Without Prejudice.

The video is still overrated, but it's not bad...