Musicians always have to toe the line regarding being taken seriously. It’s hard enough to get people to sing along with your songs every time they come on the radio, but it’s even more difficult to get those same people to listen intently to what you’re saying whenever you get up on your soapbox. George Michael had to fight like hell to get noticed by the mainstream, but when he decided to grow up in front of our eyes, he admitted that his time in Wham! was a massive blow to his credibility.
If it wasn’t for Wham! arriving in the first place, though, we probably wouldn’t have been introduced to Michael’s amazing pipes. Compared to the other massive stars of the 1980s, Wham! felt like the kind of teenybopper act that any girl could fall in love with, especially when they heard songs like ‘Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go’ on constant rotation on MTV.
Compared to the other major pop stars happening around the same time, it was pretty clear that there was a little bit of tongue-in-cheek humour to the whole thing. Michael never once claimed to be one of the biggest acts in the world when working with Wham!, but his position as a pop star was much closer to Frankie Goes to Hollywood than to The Rolling Stones or Stevie Wonder.
Rather than try to milk name recognition for the rest of his life, Michael knew that he had outgrown Wham! and needed to make a change after 1985. Their sound had already started getting a lot more adult on songs like ‘Careless Whisper’, but Michael knew that he would need to fly solo if he wanted to be the star he truly wanted to be.
Despite Faith taking him to a new level of success, Michael still thought that Wham! was the moment where he lost the chance to be taken seriously, telling Rolling Stone, “I totally threw away my personal credibility for a year and a half in order to make sure my music got into so many people’s homes. It was a calculated risk, and I knew I would have to fight my way back from it. I did it out of choice.”
It’s not like anyone was telling Michael to be the pinup star, but there’s a good chance that Michael started to change his tune the minute he saw songs like ‘Everything She Wants’ hit it big. After working so hard to be a teenybopper act, there was untapped potential for him to make serious songs, and more than half of his solo career was him capitalising on his serious side.
Sure, there were still some lighthearted songs in the mix, but his focus shifted more towards genres like soul and dance music. Those genres don’t exactly lend themselves to serious topics the best, and yet tracks like ‘I’m Waiting for the Day’ and ‘Freedom’ never lost their sense of groove once Michael decided to leave his lighthearted material behind.
Although most artists try their best just to get their foot in the door, there are only so many who can actually make it through the door and then be welcomed with open arms when they get serious. Wham! was the excuse for Michael to get in the door, and when he finally had the world’s attention, he could give his career a full reset the minute that he grew out that beard and put on the leather jacket.
