The Magic And Passion Of George Michael
George Michael lived for 53 Christmas Days. However, Christmas Night of 2016, not unlike a song the pop icon sang 30 years prior, would prove to be his last.
In a documentary from 1990 released just prior to his album Listen Without Prejudice, Michael stated the following:
“I’m not what stars are made of…I’m not Prince, I’m not Madonna. Most huge stars are almost always racked with insecurity. I mean, I have my insecurities, the same as everybody else, [but] I think that success over a number of years has ironed out a number of them. [Unlike Prince and Madonna] I never wanted to be someone else. I wanted to be a star, and I wanted people to love me…but I never wanted to be someone else.”
Not unlike numerous other industries, pop music is almost entirely based in a conversation between businesspeople and fanatics regarding how much in the way of lies, dishonesty, and artifice that the fan is willing to consume before deciding to move onto yet another artist or group presented as yet another carefully crafted series of obfuscations, subterfuges, and mirages-as-people. In being able to create from a position wherein he overcame who he was supposed to be and evolved into who he actually was, Michael brilliantly crafted a career for himself wherein he became a superstar because in many ways he had succeeded in becoming superhuman.
After an embarrassing 1998 episode which saw Michael be arrested for engaging in lewd and indecent acts in a public restroom, he finally outed himself as being a homosexual. At this point, it re-cast his then two decade long career with 60 million albums sold and 27 top-ten singles worldwide as not-so-much a series of milquetoast mainstream ditties, magnificent torch songs, and discotheque anthems. Rather, it was much more just a bunch of times that a gay man was incredibly exploring and expressing his best social and sexual self under the incredible guise of heterosexual masculinity.
Even moreso is the fact that in George Michael hiding his own self to discover his best self, the music industry allowed him to use amazing veneers to impressively fly beneath the radar in plain view of everyone. If at the time of 1982-released “Wham Rap” we’d known the pop superstar as a homosexual Greek man, the idea that he was then part of a British pastiche rap duo would more nonsensical than it likely already seemed. In fact, his success at that point would’ve required the same logical leap of faith we took in America to launch Dallas, Texas-born white guy Robert van Winkle to success as Vanilla Ice in 1990.
Instead, in the music industry never quite wanting us know about Michael’s reality, he was able to embody so much more in order to reveal his truth without revealing himself. Imagine combining the voices of Stevie Wonder, the Bee Gees’ Barry Gibb, and Elton John alongside the songwriting talent of Smokey Robinson, and the production/arrangement skills of two generations of rock and roll history into one artist. That’s exactly what George Michael represented, and that’s what made him so subversively great.
There are people who feel that Michael’s Grammy and American Music Award victories in the Rhythm and Blues category in 1987 and 1989 respectively were somehow wrong because his skin color denied the inherent soul apparent in songs like his 1987 album Faith’s singles “I Want Your Sex,” “Faith,” “Father Figure,” and “One More Try.” Thus, for as much as so much of racially antagonized Black America denigrated Michael’s success, maybe we shouldn’t have. Rather, if we knew then what we knew now, his success should’ve been viewed much more sympathetically as in searching for a conduit for expression, he found allegiance in black empowerment to succeed in a angst-ridden and nearly lily white vacuum of power.
Re-contextualizing “Careless Whisper” as a gay teenage boy recklessly breaking a straight teenage girl’s heart on the dancefloor makes it so much more than it outstandingly already was. The song’s saxophone break is an iconic moment of ’80s musical genius. However, under the guise of it representing the interminably long heartbreak of a say, a woman losing her first love under what could be the most impossible of circumstances elevates it to a whole other level of great.
Moreover, there’s “Freedom ‘90,” which in basically being a re-casting of Stevie Wonder’s “I Was Made To Love Her” as an “I Was Made To Love Myself” anthem of socio-sexual liberation and house music majesty is transcendent. Quoting all of the song’s lyrics would require an entire article unto itself. But it’s in how Michael chants the song’s pre-hook of “sometimes the clothes do not make the man” that really drives it home. Add onto that a video wherein the trappings of Michael’s one-time pseudo-hetero masculine fame explode into flames while supermodels Naomi Campbell, Linda Evangelista, Tatjana Patitz, Christy Turlington, and Cindy Crawford appear to sing his most honest song of his most honest humanity, and it’s an ultimate moment. George Michael was such an enormous pop star that the industry couldn’t deny him himself, and allowed him the chance to use the most sexually appealing women in the world to supersede and destroy his straight-jacketed veneer of manhood.
It’s 2016, and in a post- “Careless Whisper” and “Freedom ‘90” pop industry, openly gay musical artists are de rigueur. In the case of modern-era British-based stars like Sam Smith, their homosexuality is welcomed, embraced, and allows for the outing of black vocalists like Whitney Houston and Beyoncé as Smith’s influences out of the gate. Had the industry constraints that allowed George Michael’s pop magic to develop and evolve been outed upon the moment he achieved his stardom, it’s arguable that he would’ve never reached his greatest heights.
George Michael lived for 53 Christmas Days. However, Christmas Night of 2016, not unlike a song the pop icon sang 30 years prior, would prove to be his last. In reveling in the magic of his art and realizing that neither it, nor he, will literally ever exist again, we praise him forever.
That’s all I wanted
Something special, something sacred
In your eyes
For just one moment
To be bold and naked
At your side
Sometimes I think that you’ll never
Understand me
Maybe this time is forever
I will be the one who loves you
’Til the end of time
