George Michael was a British pop icon known for his soulful voice, groundbreaking hits like “Faith” and “Careless Whisper,” and activism. Starting with the duo Wham! in the early 1980s, Michael quickly became a solo star, blending pop, funk, and R&B with emotional depth. His 1987 solo debut album Faith was a massive success, establishing him as a global superstar.
Throughout his career, Michael pushed boundaries, advocating for LGBTQ+ rights and tackling issues like fame, personal struggles, and identity in his music. His voice, charisma, and impact on pop culture have left a lasting legacy in the music world.
Any measure of a great artist is about being able to kill it onstage. No matter how many times people try their best to duck into a studio and come through with something that will become a timeless piece of art, is it really worth it if it just remains an art piece and is never brought to life for the people? George Michael knew that the best way to deliver his songs was to the people directly, and even in a blockbuster decade like the 1980s, the pop star admitted he hadn’t seen anyone nearly as good as Oasis in all his days playing live.
When looking at where Wham started, though, Michael did have a lot of growing up to do before he turned into a pop star. Yes, every one of their songs got people dancing, but the more time spent looking at their early performances, the more the dance moves could have used a lot of work on tracks like ‘Young Guns’.
Then again, did it really matter when you had that kind of voice at your disposal? Regardless of the fine material that Andrew Ridgely surely contributed to the group, Michael was unstoppable with a microphone in his hand, putting together pop melodies that fit somewhere between the sophistication of Elton John and the pure bombast of soulful crooners like Aretha Franklin and Marvin Gaye.
But soul could have a lot of meanings, and while Michael approached it as a genre of music, Oasis poured their version of soul into pure rock. From the minute that ‘Supersonic’ began, no one could say this band was lacking in self-confidence, especially when Liam comes snarling about needing to only be himself.
In fact, the sheer energy of their live shows should have told people enough about what made the Britpop legends such a big deal. As the opening notes started, not one of them moved a muscle onstage, and that’s because they didn’t need to. They already had the audience in the palm of their hands, so why waste the energy?
Michael was still strutting his stuff off the back of the album Older when Oasis debuted, but he admitted that by the 2000s, he was disappointed at how much they had fallen, telling Jo Whiley, “Oasis is the most amazing band that I’ve ever seen live with the possible exception of U2. The critics made one member of Oasis feel that they were the whole of Oasis and he promptly wrecked the best band we had in 20 years – when really it was chemistry.”
And as much as the Gallagher brothers liked to run their mouths about anyone who took issue with them, it’s not like they weren’t fans of Michael’s work either. As liberal as they could be with their song “borrowing”, it doesn’t take a musical scholar to realise that their iconic B-side ‘Fade Away’ shares a melody with Wham’s ‘Freedom’.
Even though Oasis was a different group than the one that started in the 1990s by the time of Heathen Chemistry, that didn’t mean that the good times were over for good. It was just a new band, and if it meant that we still got to hear tracks like ‘Little By Little’ and ‘Lyla’, it’s not like rock fans were suffering.
