The late George Michael was not one to mince his words. In his time in the limelight, he undid the traditional idea of a pop star by being one of the most outspoken prominent musicians with a distinctly punk attitude. Regarding Wham!, of course, they were a touch campy, but there was more to some of their songs than many gave them credit for, with Michael being a master in wry comedy and parody. Yet, this popular misunderstanding of his band would be something he touched upon several times to set the record straight.
In terms of his personality, fans only need to look to Michael’s love of great music, such as Joy Division and Nirvana, to understand that he was so much more than hits such as ‘Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go’ – despite that particular song being a masterclass in reviving 1950s and early 1960s pop for a new generation – and the fact that he would dryly reference his legal troubles in music videos and his Extras cameo.
Wham! were one of the greatest pop acts of all time. While their life span was relatively short, lasting for five years between 1981 and 1986, they rose to become one of the most successful acts of the decade, selling more than 30 million records globally from 1982 to their split. While Andrew Ridgely also had his part to play, Michael was the tip of the group’s spear. His songwriting ability, societal outlook, and gamut of influences were a potent mixture.
The brilliant thing about Wham! was that while they were ostensibly influenced by funk and soul and found themselves rightly categorised in the pop genre, their early work contained a distinguishable socio-political slant, with their 1983 debut, Fantastic, addressing the era’s disaffected youth, the unemployment of the early Thatcher years and teen angst.
It’s a record brimming with topical political sentiment. This encompasses the classic lead single, ‘Wham Rap!’, which sharply celebrated unemployment and explicitly mentioned the now-defunct Department of Health and Social Security. Because of such an angle, the only song that truly stood out from Fantastic was ‘Club Tropicana’, the final single, which proved a sunny, hedonistic counterpoint to the previous ones steeped in everyday life.
There’s no surprise that Michael changed his tact after the record’s first three socio-political singles. In the group’s last-ever interview in 1986, he revealed that he felt his writing had become too formulaic at the time, which led to him naming ‘Bad Boys’ the Wham! song he hated most intensely. He explained that the third single from Fantastic was “intended to be funny,” but he felt he failed in pulling off his parody, which was misunderstood due to its uninventive nature. He felt the video was much the same. Due to the track missing the mark, he made it clear it became a burden for him after release.
Michael said: “And that’s the only record I’ve ever written to formula, and I think that’s why I don’t like it as a record, and the video is the same thing; we’d forgotten that ‘Wham Rap!’ and ‘Young Guns’ were supposed to be parodies of the people that we were playing. I mean, the guy in ‘Young Guns’ that’s talking to the girl is supposed to be a total prat, and in ‘Wham Rap!’ is basically the same thing, it was parody. I wrote ‘Bad Boys’ as a parody of this kind of macho image.”
This wasn’t the only moment Michael would trash ‘Bad Boys’. In a sign of the great strides to come later in his career as a solo artist, not long after Wham! split in 1986, he described the hit as “an albatross around my neck”. Not finished there, “I hate it,” he concluded.
