It is an inescapable fact that while George Michael left Andrew Ridgeley far behind in his rearview mirror, and while the Faith album proved Michael was capable of being the British Prince — writing, playing, and producing virtually everything, and doing it well — a certain craving for musical partnership has kept him coming back to collaboration time and time again. You can definitely see it here in the tracks connected to this, the fifth and final post of my All Wham! weekend.

And while George Michael likely contained close to 99% of the musical talent that made up the Wham! partnership, there is still an extremely large percentage of people who long for a Wham! reunion. Mind you, these may be the same people who love “Last Christmas” to such a degree that they don’t even know if they love it ironically or not. On top of that, there is a great nostalgia factor involved that continues to allow (much) lesser ’80s acts like Bananarama and Rick Astley to sell a cartload of tickets as part of package shows throughout the British Isles and select parts of Europe. And as the world moves so quickly in this age of lightning-fast technological advancement and instant gratification, most of what we deal with in our lives changes from “now” to “nostalgia” in the blink of an eye. And with nostalgia comes that warm and fuzzy feeling that softens the edges of our memories, or at least coats our mental lenses with a bit of Vaseline. (more…)

When I was 17 years old, I had my first serious makeout session. When George Michael was 17, he wrote the song that has arguably led to more makeout and baby-making sessions than any other ’80s song: “Careless Whisper“. Damn, Larry and Balki almost got busy with their stewardess girlfriends on an episode of Perfect Stangers because of it. Historically, it was a song that predated Wham!, and one whose success expedited George Michael’s solo career, and the end of Wham!.

The song also had a extra kick in the teeth for both men in Wham!. Ridgeley had to deal with the song being labeled as a George Michael solo single in the UK, and as “George Michael feat. Wham!” in the United States. And Michael had to deal with the fact that the song was listed as being written by both Michael and Ridgeley, even though Michael wrote it by himself, and Ridgeley didn’t even appear on the recording. Why was this? Well, when the group started out, there was an initial agreement that their first few completed songs would go the Lennon-McCartney route, and they’d each be listed as co-writer, no matter who the main writer was. However, that agreement soon ended, as it became clear that Ridgeley really had nothing to contribute in the way of songwriting. Or singing. Or instrumentation. In fact, though he would “play” an electric guitar in their concerts and videos, it is widely believed that it was never plugged in.

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It’s Saturday night, and it’s time to get back out on the dance floor as the all Wham! weekend continues. This time around, I’ve got a batch of Wham!-related extended dance remixes.

As I’ve said before, there’s some sort of bizarre cult following for “Last Christmas,” so a third of these remixes are various versions of that song. I’m not sure why people would go to such lengths, but I guess you have to find some way to feel you’re making use of your Pro Tools on a regular basis. Also, I think that…hey…are you paying attention?…Oh, it’s that photo over to the left, isn’t it? I thought so. Yeah, I guess you didn’t expect you were gonna come to Popdose this weekend and see something that would haunt your dreams for the rest of the winter, but sometimes life just isn’t fair, is it? Remember, though — when life hands you pale shirtless Brits in leather posing homoerotically, you make leatherade…wait a minute. (more…)

This part of the weekend covers…covers; both Wham! and George Michael covering other people, and a couple of acts covering Wham! and George Michael (and no, none will be the ironic, nu-metal cover of “Faith” by that horrible band led by a certain poseur Interscope A&R executive who formed a band in order to bang more skanks).

While George Michael leaned more toward classic R&B and soul during the peak years of his career, he — like many of the better singer/songwriters — both enjoyed and absorbed a wide variety of music, which in turn influenced his own songwriting and performances. He “paid back” these influences to a degree on his 1999 covers collection Songs from the Last Century (a failure in the U.S., but a success to varying degrees throughout Europe), which pretty much covered the entire 20th century (ranging from 1928’s “My Baby Just Cares for Me” to 1995’s “Miss Sarajevo”). Even in this abbreviated selection, we have tracks by Don McLean and Was (Not Was) rubbing up against Stevie Wonder and the Isley Brothers.

But I’m going to start off this list with what I think is the best of the bunch, George Michael’s transcendent cover of Stevie Wonder’s “They Won’t Go When I Go,” from Michael’s highly underrated 1990 Faith follow-up, Listen Without Prejudice, Vol. 1.

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Backstory:
About fifteen years ago, I was visiting my hometown outside of Los Angeles, tooling around with a couple of friends around the local colleges. I remember where we were because we were able to get excellent radio reception from the nearest school’s radio station. Anyway, we were listening to the end of the traditional hourly campus radio raga-indie-funk-chant mashup, when the DJ comes back on and says:

“That’s it for me. Coming up next…..” at which point my friend Amit blurts out: “All Wham! All Weekend!”

Needless to say, there was much cracking up to be had. But whereas your normal human being probably would have let that moment slip into the ether, Amit’s phrase has stuck with me through the years, to the point where (now that I have the potential to captivate the world with my awesome writing) I can actually make an all Wham! weekend a reality. And why wouldn’t I? Their best stuff stands out among the best of what has been forever snarkily branded as being “So ’80s!”, and George Michael is an important, quality artist in the history of popular music (or at least he was until the mid-’90s, but that’s best left for another series, possibly titled All Wasted Talent All Weekend).

Now, Wham’s! (or is it Wham!’s?) output wasn’t all that large: even with remixes, you couldn’t fill up a whole weekend with Wham! (oho! the power of alliteration entrances you, does it not?!). So the music featured here is going to be related to both Wham! and George Michael as a solo artist (Andrew Ridgeley’s single solo output, Son of Albert, was already covered by Jefito in this site’s previous incarnation, and you will all thank me for staying away from it). Also, I doubt you’d expect me to give you a whole 48 hours of music, do you? (Answer: No.) What I am going to give you are five posts to encompass the weekend: one for Friday night, and two each for the a.m. and p.m. hours of Saturday and Sunday. Each post revolves around a specific style or theme. Those are the “rules”: Pretty simple, huh?

Well then, bitches, let’s get this started! (more…)