Wonderful words by Balearic Mike.

June 25^th would have been the 60^th birthday of Georgios Kyriacos Panayiotou … so Happy Birthday! to George Michael – not only one of the most talented pop stars of his generation, but also by all accounts one of the loveliest people too!

The Wham! album, Fantastic, will always be one of my favourite records, but there are plenty of others that I could choose from George’s Wham! years, and also his even more successful solo career.

Gorgeous George possessed one of the greatest pop / soul voices of all time, and was also endowed with an immense songwriting talent, the ability to play, and produce, his own music, as well as the imagination and vision to create his public image. This combination created a pop album so monumentally huge that it caused the poor lad a near nervous breakdown. 1987’s Faith, although topping the UK charts for only just 1 week, went on to hold the US #1 spot for 3 months, and was also the first album by a white pop artist to conquer the R&B charts. All 4 singles from the album were also big Billboard hits, and, in 1988, George was the biggest selling artist in the world. This level of stardom was all a bit much for a shy 25-year-old, and his next album, and this single from it, did its best to tear down the pop star image he’d created and start again. 

Freedom is known almost as much for its stunning David Fincher directed video. Staring 5 supermodels – Naomi Campbell, Linda Evangelista, Tatjana Patitz, Christy Turlington, and Cindy Crawford – who lip-sync the song in George’s place, the video also showed several iconic items from the “Faith” video –  George’s leather jacket, the jukebox, and guitar – being destroyed.*

Freedom is a total banger! Built around some Sympathy For the Devil style bongos, James Brown’s “Funky Drummer” break, and a killer Italo-house style piano riff, it sounds very much like 1989 / 1990 club classic. VERY Balearic! The ‘Back To Reality’ mix is almost a different track rather than a remix, although they share a similar tempo and vibe. George sings most of Soul II Soul’s Back To Life over a more ‘Soul II Soul’ style shuffle, while this version also borrows chunks of Sinead O’Connor’s I Am Stretched On Your Grave.

Given that this is one of George’s undoubted finest moments, the British public in their infinite wisdom didn’t quite agree, and this masterpiece peaked at only #28. It did a lot better stateside, reaching #8 and selling 500,000 copies.

In spite of a troubled later life – he spent 4 weeks in jail at one point – George never stopped being a lovely human being, and in the aftermath of his death a flood of heroic stories emerged – not only the amount of charity donations he’d made, but the 100s of little individual moments, like when he’d tipped a student nurse £5000 to help with her debts, or the £15000 he sent anonymously to a contestant on Deal Or No Deal who wanted to start IVF treatment. If we could all be a bit more like George, the world would be a much better place. I don’t mean in the phenomenally talented, really really good-looking pop star sense! I just mean be nice!

Thank you for the music George.

*The video also included male models John Pearson, Scott Benoit, Peter Formby, Todo Segalla, plus fashion photographer Mario Sorrenti, but no one remembers that. 

One of us needs to do something on George’s Listen Without Predjuice. I always thought that Freedom was a sanitized Primal Scream rip off (polished, no necessary rough edges – though all the samples you mention show that his head and heart was in the right place). Cowboys & Angels, though, well, wow : ) – Rob**

**Thank you to Mountain Of One’s Mo Morris for reminding me. 

For more from Balearic Mike you can find him on both Facebook and Instagram – @balearicmike. 

Mike has a Mixcloud page packed with magnificent, magical, music, and you can catch him live on 1BTN, from 12 noon until 2 (UK time) every 1st and 3rd Friday.

You can also check out the super silk screen prints of “Balearic Wife” over at @jo_lambert_print