Speaker 1: Welcome everybody to the Shirley you Can't Be Serious Podcast.
I am here with my aviator, ray band, reflective sunglasses on,
and my hair frosted, and Jason is in his letter
coat and tight fitting Levi's jeans right absolutely, and we're
both pretending like we can play the guitar.
Speaker 2: I'm just shaking my butt, that's all I that's all
I know how to do.
Speaker 1: Shake my but.
Speaker 3: Hello everybody, and welcome to the Surely you Can't Be
Serious Podcast, discussing and debating the iconic and the forgotten
of eighties and nineties pop culture with your co hosts
Jane V. Graves and Jason Caliban.
Speaker 1: I'm excited to jump into this one. This is new
territory for us. Is very much pop, and I realized
we covered Michael Jackson and that's the king of pop.
But we've been primarily a rock and roll kind of thing,
and in Exit was about as close to pop as
we got. And now we're getting full on in as
poppy as pop can get with mister George Michael.
Speaker 2: I'm excited about this too, because even though it is
a full on head dive into pop music, this was
everywhere in nineteen eighty eight. You couldn't go anywhere without
hearing George Michael's songs. And this guy has a voice
like an angel. So I've got no problem covering talented,
impactful musicians from the eighties. So let's do this, all right.
So just to remind everybody, this episode is about George
Michael's Faith album. But this is a comparison with Inexcess's Kick,
which we did last week.
Speaker 1: Yes, both of these albums came out in nineteen eighty seven,
and we're both topping the pop charts during that time.
Speaker 2: Yep, very end of eighty seven, and we're prominent all
the way through eighty eight into nineteen eighty nine.
Speaker 1: So you're ready to dive right in.
Speaker 2: Let's do this all right, clone, all right.
Speaker 1: In June nineteen sixty three, eight, a young Greek child
was born named Porjijos Kyriakos Peneluto, not quite as poppy
as George Michael, but anyway. He was born in England
and grew up there. His father owned a restaurant called
Mister Jack's, a Greek style restaurant, and George had to
work in the restaurant, cleaning dishes and such like that,
and knew at the time, he wasn't sure what he
wanted to do, but it definitely wasn't working in a restaurant.
Speaker 2: That's right, he said. His memories are that he hated
every moment of it.
Speaker 1: So George's dad was kind of of a task masacre
disciplinarian type of father, and he didn't really connect with
him very well. Had a great relationship with his mother,
and as he grew up, he kind of had some insecurities,
felt like he was fat, he wore glasses, had funny hair,
and eventually he moved to Bushy Meads School, where a
young man named Andrew Ridgeley was asked to take him
under his wing, and George and Andrew became fast friends.
George was impressed with Andrew's care free lifestyle, good looks,
ability to get girls, and so they became inseparable, and
then at age seventeen, they both quit school at the
behest of Andrew and decided to start a band together
and lived on welfare while they were composing songs but
putting their dance moves and style together.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this band was initially called the Executives, but that
didn't stick. And you may know them better as Whim
Hard to Miss Whim in nineteen eighty four. These guys
when they got together, so they were young. Guys were
really young, like when they got started they were nineteen yeah,
But George had an ability to write catchy tunes, and
Andrew wanted to be the biggest band in the world
and it'd be great, right.
Speaker 1: They released their first album, Fantastic in nineteen eighty three,
and it did not take off until there was this
weird dumb luck circumstance where a band was unable to
play on a little show called Top of the Pops
in England, which was basically like an American bandstand style
show in England. And when that band wasn't able to play,
Wham happened to be able to fill the spot, and
when they came in, it was George and Andrew dancing
around having fun with a couple of other lady singers
that were in the band, and they had such a
good time on their show that it was almost an
overnight success for them. Their singles, which hadn't done much
of until then, suddenly started climbing up the charts, and
it wasn't much longer before they were everywhere on the airwaves.
Speaker 2: I saw this. One of the songs that they played
on top of the pops was young Guns go for It.
But these guys had a rap song. These are two
English white guys in nineteen eighty two who were rapping
that was pretty unheard of at that time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, in their moves and their style were certainly
something that kind of drove the girls around crazy. They
immediately became teen idols and everywhere they would go, girls
were screaming their names and looking for their autographs. So
the next album to come out for Wham was an
album called Make It Big.
Speaker 2: If you heard of that one, yeah, Actually, I think
everybody in the world had a copy of This is
like passed out in the fourth grade of my school.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I think I've mentioned on some of our
other episodes. This was one of the very first tapes
that I had. It was this and Minute Work and
nineteen eighty four.
Speaker 2: Okay, So the big songs off of Make It Big
were wake Me Up Before You Go Go, which I
can barely say without singing. Everybody in the world knows
this song. But Everything She Wants was a huge hit Freedom,
which we'll talk about here in a second, and then
Careless whisper.
Speaker 1: So just before this, just before Fantastic came out, George
had an experience that led him to question his sexuality,
and when he approached his bandmates about it, they were
concerned about how his family would feel. In the eighties,
aides had just become a thing, and this was a
shocking and scary thing that was associated at the time
with that lifestyle, and so they convinced him at the
time to just keep it a secret, and so for
the next sixteen years he didn't say anything about it. Now,
I will say this, I didn't really have any question
about it, even as a kid watching the videos, going Okay,
that guy's different than other guys. So as the bandmates
became very famous, ironically, there was a lot of dating
a very beautiful women by both Andrew and George, and
some gaming of stealing of the women from each other
as their fame went on. One of those women that
was really into whim at the time was a young
lady named Brooke Shields who was also a megastar in
the early eighties, and apparently when they met, became very serious,
very fast, and George said, I just got scared and
just kind of laughed.
Speaker 2: George Michael and Brook Shields. That's a pretty powerful early
eighties couple right there. Yeah. Okay, so of those singles
that Wham put out from Make It Big.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about Caroless Whisper for just a second. The
story behind the song is kind of interesting. George used
to chaperone his sister to skating rinks, even though he
was two years younger than she was, but he said
he would basically let her go do whatever she wanted
because all he wanted to do was stare at this
beautiful girl named Jane. At the time, he said, I
was a fat, bushy haired, classes wearing kid who had
who never had a chance with her. And then you know,
he met Andrew, He changed style, girls became interested in him.
He began dating another girl named Helen, and then lo
and behold, he happens to a couple of years later,
come across Jane again and she has seen him doing
some DJing and she's now enamored with him, and so
he starts seeing Jane without telling Helen, and he said
this song. He remembers coming up with it on the bus,
like he very very vividly remembers, you know, in the
bus home and as he's handing the money to the
bus driver, as he's about to get off the bus,
this sax solo comes into his head, unmistakable sax ol.
Speaker 2: Right, yeah, I heard him say that. At that time
that was the proudest he'd ever been musically.
Speaker 1: When he had gotten the song arranged, he had a
friend who played sacks at the local pubs for fun.
He had recorded it. It was the sound that he wanted,
but it was just a simple recording. So when they
got together to actually record this song, they thought, Okay,
we're big at this point. We're going to bring in
the top saxophonists from LA to just do this track.
And it was a deal where he should have been
in by eleven and out by twelve, but three hours
later George is still like, no, this is not right.
You're not doing it right, and ultimately gave up. And
they went through eleven different saxophonists over the course of
several months, and George was just like, no, this isn't it,
This isn't it. And finally, when George wasn't even there,
they recorded a saxophonist playing the sacks. But the saxophonist said,
you know this isn't kind of a weird key. If
I could play it in a lower key, then I
could probably find that little magic thing that George is wanting.
So he played it in the lower key. Then the
producers sped it up to the key that George wanted
to sing it in, and when George came in and
listened to it, he said, that's it. That's the solo
that I want. So with us and our you know,
the production of music and synth sounds and stuff like that,
it doesn't hurt our ears to hear the saxophone sped
up to where it almost sounds like an alto saxophone.
But that's that magic saxophone sound is actually played in
lower keys pitched up to sound like it does now.
Oh sweet.
Speaker 2: So one of the things that is kind of unique
about Careless Whisper is there are lots of outlets where
they'll say Careless wis featuring George Michael and he was
the only one in the music video, which was strange
that it came from a Wham album, but it seemed
to be George's song, even though Andrew Ridgeley co wrote
the song with him. I don't know what do you
think about that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's strange. I haven't been able to find an
answer as to why they did it this way, other
than maybe that George had this kind of deeper, longer
connection with the song. I mean, it was before he
had formed a band with Andrew that he started putting
this song together. So maybe it was just an agreement
between he and Andrew that, hey, this song I just
feel like needs to be my song. That's the only
reason that I can think, because it was. I mean,
they were still Wham together, they were still touring together,
but one album cover just has him. I mean, it's
just George Michael Careless Whisper, and then the alternative one
is one that says Wham on it Careless Whisper featuring
George Michael. So I don't know why this seemed to
be more of a solo single than a Wham single.
I don't know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So the single after Careless Whisper is a song
called Freedom, which if you've seen the music video, you've
seen that the band went to China, which was this
huge deal in nineteen eighty five. I guess the producer
went to some leader in China and said, Okay, here's
a picture of Queen, and he had some pictures that
were unflattering of Freddie Mercury and then showed in pictures
of Wham and basically are two clean cut young men,
and the Chinese guy said, I'll take them, pointing to
the Wham picture.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that's fantastic, and it was. It was a
big deal. I mean, that was that allowed other bands
to come in. It kind of improved the relationship between
China and the West and allowing things like that to happen.
But that was that was a huge deal for them globally.
I mean they were already a big success in Europe
and in the Americas, but to do that that created
such a buzz about him that obviously the money just
poured in at that point.
Speaker 2: And you got to think, these guys are very young
at this time. So he's born in nineteen sixty three
and nineteen eighty five, they're playing I know, they're twenty
two years old.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's insane. So at the time that George had
decided to form this band with Andrew, he went to
his father and told him what his plan was, and
his father was like, why do you want to do this?
Why don't you just want to come and run the
restaurant with me. This was what you're supposed to do.
You're never going to amount to anything as a musician,
and so that was kind of a big blow for him. Obviously,
he moved out, started doing all of his stuff with Andrew,
and then as time goes on, they hit their success,
they start performing these concerts. Finally, his dad comes to
one of these concerts several years after you know, telling
him he would never amount to anything and basically not
having anything to do with him for that time period.
He comes to one of the concerts and sees thousands
and thousands of people screaming and singing and in love
with his son, and he says, I wept like a baby.
I realized that I had been wrong about my own son.
Speaker 2: They had a tough relationship and his dad initially said,
why would you want to be a singer? You can't
sing with a flip, And I'm like, did he ever
take the time to listen to him sing? So they
play China in nineteen eighty five. They also play Live
Aid in nineteen eighty five.
Speaker 1: Yes, which was Live Aid produced by Bob Belard, who
later his wife would have an affair and ultimately a
child with Michael us.
Speaker 2: It's funny how these are so many stories are intertwined.
So they play live aid in nineteen eighty five. Their
next album that comes out has a couple of great
songs on it, in my opinion, the Edge of Heaven
and I'm Your Man. These are great catchy.
Speaker 1: Pop tunes yep.
Speaker 2: But at this point they're still kind of teeny bopper.
Speaker 1: Songs, absolutely, and George is tired of the teeny bopper
persona that he has fallen into, and so he decides
he needs to go out on his own. He needs
to separate himself from Wham, he needs to separate himself
from his lifelong friend Andrew Ridgeley, and he needs to
do something that is his own and is grown up.
Speaker 2: He was such a good writer that he could continue
that young, teeny bopper Wham character and continue to write
songs and successful songs will probably make a bazillion dollars
in all the success in the world. But he really
craved the respect that a solo artist, somebody like Madonna
or Prince or Michael Jackson would get.
Speaker 1: He basically felt like with Wham he would never be
taken seriously as a musical artist.
Speaker 2: You know he's not wrong about that either.
Speaker 1: No. I mean the reason that I Want Your Sex
was the first big boom from this album is because
he wanted to let parents know it's not okay for
you to go out and buy my albums for your kids.
Speaker 2: All right. So a lot of people say that his
sort of first steps as a solo artist came with
Careless Whisper, and I would agree with that. But his
leap came not with Faith but with a song that
came out in early nineteen eighty seven. Sometimes it's this
kid's forgotten, I think, But the song I Knew You
Were Waiting for Me with Aretha Franklin.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, that was a huge I mean that was
a soulful song that was not the bubblegum pop that
Wham had been putting out before.
Speaker 2: This is a great song. I love this song. Reach
number one in April of nineteen eighty seven, was number
one for two weeks, So if you're counting at home,
that's number One's with Waking Up Before You Go Go
Everything She wants Careless Whisper and Now I Knew You
were waiting for Me with the Queen of Soul.
Speaker 1: Are We ready to jump into the album.
Speaker 2: Yeah, let's dive into the album.
Speaker 1: Okay, diving into the album, we have such an epic
and I just I love this. He wanted to set
himself out as a musical artist who is not the
bubblegum pop artist for kids. So what does he do.
He takes this song that was a huge hit for
Wham and he plays it on an organ as if
it's sacred, and then all of a sudden that music
stops and the guitar comes in.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So the organ for those of you who don't know,
and I didn't recognize that that is the Wham song Freedom.
Speaker 1: When I turned that first song on the first time
I listened to that organ, I'm like, wait a minute,
I recognize that organ tune. What is that? And as
I played it in my head, I was like, I'm
singing the lyrics to a different George Michael. No, this
is the Wham song Freedom from Make a Big Thing.
Speaker 2: Okay, So in my opinion, the organ tune for Freedom
sounds like a funeral and I think he's putting to
death Wham.
Speaker 1: Yeah that's a certainly that's another way to look at
it too. I don't know. I don't know which one
of them is the right, but it's either way the
equally the same, same idea. What was before is no longer.
We are now something new.
Speaker 2: Okay. So I don't think we've mentioned this before, but curiously,
the Faith album was released October thirtieth of nineteen eighty seven. Okay.
The first single was I Want Your Sex. That came
out was released June first of eighty seven, so five
months prior to the album being released, right, And the
second single, Faith was released October twelfth, nineteen eighty seven.
It's kind of curious of the dates how they had
two singles released before the album was even available. All right,
So Faith is the second single released October twelfth, nineteen
eighty seven. This one hit number one December twelfth, nineteen
eighty seven, only took seven weeks to reach the top
spot on the Hot one hundred. That's like a rocket,
I mean, that's shooting up the charts yep, and was
number one for four weeks.
Speaker 1: So during the recording of the song, he did something
that we've talked about before that Lang would do, and
he built this song piece by piece. He would record
line by line, sometimes word by word to get it
just perfect. But obviously what came out sounds very polished
and fluid, so it was a very well produced song.
Speaker 2: This is a fantastic pop song. It's not a rocker
by any stretch, but it's just a great pop song.
Speaker 1: It's not the rock of the nineteen eighties. It's the
rock of like the nineteen sixties. This is Bo Diddley.
I mean, this is done. No, no, this is that
reimagined it. And so that little guitar beat that he's
got going on is all about the early rock and
roll style. And I mean, crap, he looks like the
nineteen eighty seven version of Elvis.
Speaker 2: Yes, I mean it absolutely got the.
Speaker 1: Elvis hair, except it's frosted. The jeans, the leather, the glasses.
I mean it's it is all right there. And then
he's got that guitar and he's swiveling his hips just
like the camp.
Speaker 2: Okay, so this was the number one single of the
year in the United States in nineteen eighty eight. Okay,
it was the song of nineteen eighty eight. Let's talk
about the look for a second, all right. So he
has created this character, this masculine character with the leather jacket,
cowboy boots, the jeans, the guitar, the ray band, sunglasses,
the five o'clock's.
Speaker 1: Double, the bearded wonder.
Speaker 2: This was all a character that he created. And I
was talking to you off air. I think this is
based on other than the five o'clock shadow and the
ear ring and the frosted hair. This is Maverick from
Top Dock. Oh yeah, oh, the leather jacket, the ray bands,
the jeans, you know, the boots.
Speaker 1: And the guitar. I mean, and the guitar is you
said it's a costume, it's a character. I mean, any
guitar player watching him play is going to go, You're
not playing that guitar. What is he doing? And so
somebody actually asked him the like, okay, you don't play
the guitar, why are you in this video with a guitar?
And he said, Americans, if you stick a guitar on,
you have a big penis.
Speaker 2: Something that he's intending to be a lot of things
in this video, including a guitar.
Speaker 1: Player, fighter jets, guitars, penises. There you go.
Speaker 2: This song is covered by Limp Biscuit. Have you heard
this version of it? Uh? Yeah, I guess it would
be nice touch about it.
Speaker 1: I know, not everybody he has got a body like me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm not a fan. I'm not a fan. I
just stick with the George Michael version.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: This song was featured in Big Bang Theory The Goldbergs,
which is a great show, The Office, and the movie
Ready Player One. It's a great song.
Speaker 1: Where is it a Ready Player one?
Speaker 2: When he goes to the library? When oh Man, when
he goes to the library. Okay, all right, So this
song was knocked out of the number one spot by
So Emotional, by Whitney Houston, one of the pop stars
at the time that he was trying to reach that level.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, and it had been. The album itself was
in number one in and out several times, knocked out
at one point, I think by Tiffany and her debut album.
Speaker 2: Yes. So they asked him, you know, what does faith
mean to you?
Speaker 1: You know?
Speaker 2: And he said, well, it represents the way I felt
at the moment. It's kind of like another word for
hope or optimism. So it was just a strong word.
He liked the idea of being a simple idea for
the song, and then he actually this was his second
choice for the title of the album. The original choice
to be the name of the album was Kissing a Fool,
but he liked the simplicity of this song and that
word so much that it became fair. And I think
there's a right choice.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, all right, moving on to track number two, I
Will Be Your Father Figure.
Speaker 3: That's a.
Speaker 2: Song same.
Speaker 3: So de Sid.
Speaker 2: This song's a masterpiece. Okay, this song is a pop masterpiece.
Speaker 1: Well it is. It definitely needs to be a part
of the Makeout Slash four Play Slash Finish Off mixtape
of nineteen eighty seven. So you guys know that, Like
we talked back and forth before we have these episodes
and talk what we're about, what we're doing. And Jason
at one for says, I just ran like three miles
and listened to the Faith album and it was a
little weird from time to time. I cannot imagine running
and sweating out in the Oklahoma son to I Will
Be Your Father.
Speaker 2: I got to do my research, man. So Father Vigor
was actually the fourth single. It stayed number one for
two weeks. It was released December twenty eighth, nineteen eighty seven,
hit number one February twenty seventh, nineteen eighty eight. Again
that's two months to reach the top. That's really fast,
and it knocked out Never Going to Give You Up
by Rick Ashley, Oh the Rick Roll. And this reached
number one in the United States, but it only got
to number eleven in the United Kingdom. It was the
first time that he failed to reach the top ten
in his home country. And I'm like, with this song,
this is the one that didn't make the top ten.
That's crazy, all right.
Speaker 1: So this video was directed by George Michael and Andy Morahan,
who had also done the video for Faith and I
Want Your Sex and Monkey, and they both together ended
up winning the award for Best Direction in a Video
for Father Figure in the nineteen eighty eight MTV Video
Music Awards.
Speaker 2: Nicely to Come a moon Man. Yeah this video, he's
a cab driver and then he meets that high fashion
model and they kind of stare at each other longingly.
That high fashion model is Tanya Coleridge, by the way,
who at the time I thought every woman just wore
garter belts, and you know, like, this is exactly what
I want my life to be.
Speaker 1: Right. Jason got married and his wife's getting ready. He's like,
are you gonna put on your guard belt. We're about
to head out and forgetting your garter.
Speaker 2: That's right, don't put your launch I'll take yours beds
off and put on your lingerie.
Speaker 1: Let's go. It's hilarious. So I don't know if you
have you seen the movie Atomic Blonde, I have not. Okay,
talk about a sensual movie. It's not a sentual movie.
There's a there's a few pretty central parts in it,
but this song is essential as it is is part
of this huge fight scene in it. And to throw
it back to the Tom Cruise top gun thing, the
producers actually wanted to use take My Breath Away by
Berlin in the scene, but they couldn't clear it, and
so instead they use this in a kick but Charlie's
Throne beautiful and bad a making it awesome.
Speaker 2: Nice cool, that's really cool. Father Figure was sampled in
PM Don's Looking Through Patient Eyes nineteen ninety three. It
was sampled in the song Father by Ill COOLJ. And
it was sampled by Destiny's Child in Winter Paradise. Pretty
impactful song. Absolutely, Okay, what's your feeling on this song?
You like this one?
Speaker 1: Oh? Man? I love it so far. I mean, I'll
just say the first the first several song, the first
four songs at the very least, and we'll have to
go through but out of the box are fan freaking
tastic Faith Dynamo. I mean, the throwback to the fifty
sixties rock and the poppy drums and hooks. It's amazing.
And then father figure, my gosh, I mean the song
was made to make out too, and so why wouldn't you, Yeah,
why wouldn't you at my age, which would have been thirteen,
love that song.
Speaker 2: Right all right? So that brings us to the most
controversial song on the album. This song is called I
Want Your Sex.
Speaker 1: So you want to tell me what you said you
thought the music sounded.
Speaker 4: This song and juicy, Yep, there's something very sex sounding
about this music.
Speaker 1: I don't know what they did, how they made the
plunking and the blipping and the blooping and all of
that with the instruments. I don't know how they did
what they did, but it just it's just like, man,
it sounds like doing it.
Speaker 2: It does. It sounds like yes, like a wet porno
at the beginning of the song. This song was released
originally on the Beverly Hills Cop two soundtrack.
Speaker 1: Really, I did not know that it was one of
the hits.
Speaker 2: So like Shakedown, Cross My Broken Heart, and I Watch
Your Sex. It was actually played in the movie during
the strip club scene. But this was released June first,
nineteen eighty seven. And like you said, this was a
stark difference from Wham. Right out of the gate. He's
demonstrating I'm done with that teeny bopper crap. I'm making
a song about sex.
Speaker 1: And if you are, if you happen to be an
aspiring music artist, I think that we've learned from def Leppard,
Pour Some Sugar in Me, Van Halen, Black and Blue,
and George Michael. If you write a song that strippers
want to strip to, then you're probably going to have
a hit.
Speaker 2: That's right, Okay, So here's something that I do want
to dive into. This to me is very interesting. Growing
up in the Midwest, I definitely remember this song. There
was a big backlash by parents and stuff about playing
this song. It was kind of the first song popular
song that had the word sex in it, right, So
you had, like Prince had songs that he had that
were sexual in nature, but they weren't the hits, right.
There were other tracks on the album. But nineteen ninety
nine was what out front. You know, Delirious was out front.
This is the first song that was like a hit
song had the word sex in it. This, yeah, only
reached number two. So it only reached number two because
at the time that was based on sales like single
sales and radio play, and there were a lot of
radio stations around the country that refused to play the song.
I remember there were certain radio stations that had alternate
versions of it that the song was called I Want
Your Love, and it was this loop from the song
where they've played I Want Your Love, I Want you Love.
Speaker 1: Sexual Healing is about the closest you got to the
mention of sex and a song, and that was that
was A eighty two by Marvin Gay. But this is not,
I mean, this isn't just a song mentioned in sex
and the title. This is a guy who's I mean,
just depending on your perspective and your where you stand
on these type of things, it's a guy. It's either
a guy who's tired of getting teased or a guy
who's pushing a girl a little too hard. As a
dad of a daughter, I'm like, what are you talking about?
Like this, start your mouth he is, he's a good
girl alone, stop pressuring her.
Speaker 2: Yeah, a man's got his patience and that is where
his ended. According to this song, sex is natural, sex
is good. Not everybody does it, but everybody should. Sex
is natural, sex is fun, and sex's best when it's.
Speaker 1: One on one. Although I'm not really sure if he
bought into that line, I don't know if he believed.
Speaker 2: I don't think he did either.
Speaker 1: There was a there's a part of this video that
I from. This is just from memory. I did not
go back and research this thing, but it seemed to
me that that even MTV was resistant to playing the
video until they put that part in where he's writing
on the girl explore monogamy. He's like writing with lipstick
on the girl, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was a big deal. Yeah, even MTV was
carried off by this song. I do want to mention
one other thing before we dive into the video, because
I do want to get into the video. Casey Cason
would not say the title of this song during the
Top forty countdown. He would say things like George Michael's
greatest hits is up next at number two or whatever.
He would not say I want your Sex, which, even
to me at the time, I'm like, I didn't know
sex is something you could possess, like we have Yeah,
I've got my sex, but I want your sex together
we have sex. Yeah, Okay, So let's talk about the
video for a second. Okay, Like you said, MTV made
him because they were concerned about the AIDS epidemic. They
were concerned that this was going to be promoting promiscuous activities,
and so they made him put this little PSA at
the beginning of the video where he's talking about this
is not about crazy sex. This is about monogamy.
Speaker 1: There are so many songs that are about what he's
talking about in this song leading up to this song, right,
I mean, You've got Darling Nikki and Erotic City by Prince.
I mean, Prince was pushing the envelope the whole time.
He just wasn't saying the word sex. And there probably
even those songs are a bit more graphic than I
Want Your Sex is because he's actually because he's not
actually talking about having sex as much as as Prince
does in some of his other songs. But man, the
I mean, after this song came out, you had I
Want to sex you up, and I touched myself and
I mean all kinds of I mean then, and of
course Prince releases cream and get off. It's it is.
It is amazing. What when somebody finally just goes, oh,
there's the line, yeah, I'll just go ahead and step
over that, and everybody's like, yeah, step over go.
Speaker 2: Okay, So you mentioned Prince. Let's talk about Prince for
just a second. Because one of the things that George
Michael does in this song, and he actually does it
other songs on this album, is he artificially pitches up
his voice similar to what Prince did in the Sign
of the Times album. Okay music video when we talk about.
Speaker 1: Music video, Yeah, just to quote here, Okay. So, I
mean this is the time of AIDS being a very
huge factor. Safe sex was what everybody was all about
at the time that this thing came out, and George
said this, He said, the media has divided love and
sex incredibly. The emphasis of the AIDS campaign has been
on safe sex. But the campaign has missed relationships. It's
missed emotion, it's missed monogamy. I Want Your Sex is
about attaching lust to love, not just to strangers.
Speaker 2: In the music video, once again directed by Andy Morahan.
This features George Michael's girlfriend at the time, Kathy Young.
In the video, he writes the words explore and monogamy
on her back in lipstick, which, as a fourteen year
old I thought that is the coolest thing that one
could possibly do. I would have written the words I
Want Your Sex in lipstick. But you know, okay, one
of the things I want to mention on the album
on the LP. On the CD, I Want Your Sex
Part one and Part two are lumped together in this
big long song. Oh yeah, see that bothers me. I
take I separate those.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you should. This is a pop single, and no
pop single needs to be nine minutes long. I mean,
save that for the album Rock of Lynyrd Skinnyard. If
the song lasts longer than the sex last made the
song too long, that's great.
Speaker 2: Well, I guess if we're done with I Want Your
Sex Part one, we can move on to I Want
Your Sex Part two.
Speaker 1: Okay, shouldn't it happen? That's all I really could say
about this, but go ahead.
Speaker 2: Okay, all right? So, so Part one of I Want
Your Sex is known as Rhythm one Lust Rhythm one Lust. Okay, yeah,
I Want Your Sex Part two. It sounds like the
lounge act version of a great song, Rhythm to Brass
in Love, Rhythm to brass and Love.
Speaker 1: Thank you.
Speaker 2: So the song that we know as I Want Your
Sex is rhythm one lust. This is rhythm to brass
in Love. This is horns and lounge act and it's
it's the version of the great song that I don't
want to hear. I don't like it at all.
Speaker 1: What do you think? It is unnecessary? And it doesn't.
It takes away from the first song instead of adding
to it. I mean, as far as quality and listenability
is concerned, it's not. I don't don't care.
Speaker 2: For it me too. Just leave it off, Just leave
the great song. Yeah, cut trim the fat here.
Speaker 1: I'm doing this just to let you know. As to
those weird sounds that we were talking about, they were
generated with a very early sampling device called a green
Gate DS three, which ran on an Apple two computer.
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, that's awesome.
Speaker 1: The rhythm track on this song was the result of
a happy accident. Most of the sounds on the song
were made by using two synthesizers and a Len drum machine,
which is also a sampler. The devices were connected to
a MIDI unit which went a little it started messing up,
and it triggered some random sounds, and Chris Porter says, oh,
dang it already said it, and George said, hang on
a second, Hang on a second. That sounds really good,
doesn't it. And he then Chris says, it's a little
bit weird, isn't it. And he said, yeah, but if
we just take a bit out here and there and
a bit they we might be able to use it.
And that's how they came up with those sounds. And
they recorded a few bars of that with the kind
of squelching that's the word squelching noise, and that's where
you get that weird sound that kind of morphs into
the song What is next?
Speaker 2: One more try?
Speaker 1: This song is friggin beautiful.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is an amazing song. In my opinion, this
is either the first or second best song on the album,
this or Father Figure.
Speaker 1: I love this song.
Speaker 2: It's so good. It's so good.
Speaker 1: Interestingly, with Father Figure, it had started off as a
dance style type of song, but then George Michael, who
by the way, he produced this album himself, like he
was the producer. He took out the drums and he
realized that it became much more special, and he did
kind of the same thing here with one more try.
This is like a this is in the style of
like Marvin Gay or Stevie Wonder. It's just an amazing ballad.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this one almost feels gospel to me.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: It starts out with that synth that almost feels like
church music. And I think the video kind of backs
that feeling up.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's got he's singing with the stained glass behind him,
and it's just this very kind of straightforward. I mean,
the focus is on him and the song. There's not
it's not. The video is not a storytelling kind of video.
It is a I'm presenting myself to you the audience
in this way, like like you said, like a gospel song.
Speaker 2: Okay. So this song reached number one on the Hot
one hundred May twenty eighth of nineteen eighty eight. This
song was a triple chart number one. Okay, this is
a really cool fact. So it hit number one on
the Hot one hundred, It hit number one on the
Hot R and B chart, and number one on the
Adult Contemporary chart. This is the last song to do
that by a white male artist until Robin Thick did
that with Lost Without You in two thousand and seven.
Speaker 1: There's no question when you're listening to this album that
the influence is predominantly the R and B music. There
weren't there were not a whole lot of white guys
who are putting out this kind of music, but it was.
I mean, he really he did such a fantastic job
with it.
Speaker 2: So his voice is very soulful, you know, he's got
such great vocals that the R and B community accepted him,
which is really funny to think about. When you go
back and listen to Wake Me Up Before you go go,
that's about the biggest whitebread song you could possibly have,
and you say, Okay, this guy is going to be
number one on the R and B charts very shortly.
Well that's a little bit hard to believe at that time.
But this song is just so good. The interesting So
there's a couple of interesting things about this song that
I think are worth mentioning. So this is the third
consecutive number one from Faith, which I Want Your Sex.
We already talked about hit number two, mainly because the
radio wouldn't play it. It reached number eight on the
UK charts, so he was not doing as well in
his home country as he did in America. It seems
kind of crazy. This is the sixth number one.
Speaker 1: For George Michael. Yeah, that's awesome and he did it.
Speaker 2: This one debuted at number forty like when it was released,
debuted at number forty and took only seven weeks to
reach number one.
Speaker 1: That's incredibly fast, and to do that well, the song
has to have merit on multiple levels. Obviously, the hook
is there, I mean, the melody on this one is
flat out awesome. The instrumentation for the eighties was spot on.
His voice is incredible and soulful. And then the lyrics,
I mean, the lyrics tell you a story of a
man who has been in bad relationships before, who's trying
to say no to a relationship that's in front of him,
only to be ultimately overcome the end and fall in
love and be part of the relationship as a great storyline.
Speaker 2: One More Try was the second longest running number one
of nineteen eighty eight, tied with Every Rose Has Its
Thorn by Poison, and only behind Steve Winwood's Roll with it,
which was number one for four weeks. I was talking
to my wife about this, and she remembers being a
fifteen year old and this song really spoke to her heart.
So this is her favorite song on the Faith album.
She's not alone in that. Elton John said this is
his favorite George Michael song and that he's not jealous
about many songs, but this song is one that he
wish he would have written.
Speaker 1: That's great, that's a great comp.
Speaker 2: Mariah Carey covered this song in twenty fourteen. Have you
listened to that version of it?
Speaker 1: Oh?
Speaker 2: Okay, so I listened to it. I also listened to
her version of def Leppards bringing on the Heartbreak Not
so good, all right, not the best, but this one
because it's that softer, more soulful ballad. She actually does
have a good version of this. I thought it was good.
Speaker 1: It's not horrible, but it's it's not as good as
the first one.
Speaker 2: It's not as good as the first one. Let's talk
about the video for a second, Okay. This video was
directed by Tony Scott. Tony Scott is the director of Thailand.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, well, I mean and you can definitely see
the top gun like the take My breath Away part
of Top Gun exafinitely the style of this video for sure,
the blowing sheets and perfect for this song.
Speaker 2: Last little tidbit I've got on this. This was knocked
out of the number one spot by Rick Astley's Together Forever.
So Rick Astley also knocked Father Figure out of the
number one spot, which is kind of interesting.
Speaker 1: So George Michael has been Rick rolled a couple times.
Speaker 2: Now, Freaking Rick Astley keeps kicking me out. All right,
stop your tape, kick it out, flip it over for
side two.
Speaker 1: Okay. The first song on side two is hard Day.
Speaker 2: Don't Bring Me Down. Okay. This song is actually the
third single of the Fate, which to me was kind
of a surprise because I wasn't familiar with the song.
They didn't make a video for this song. I didn't
know it. I didn't hear it. But it's good.
Speaker 1: I like it. It's got that funk. It's one of the
funky songs on the album. It's and I dig it.
But I feel like they just kind of missed the
mark a little bit. It's not bad. It just I
heard this and I was like, this could be a single,
but it's just missing something and I can't even put
my finger on it. But I guess they felt like
it wasn't missing anything because obviously they released it as.
Speaker 2: A single Father Figure be a hit today, kissing it
to be a hit today. This one, it's a little
bit eighties.
Speaker 1: Yeah, let me let me listen to this.
Speaker 2: Which we love eighties. We love eighties, so don't get
me wrong on that. I really like the chorus in
the song.
Speaker 1: So you get this really interesting kind of almost Native
American style whistling going on, and I don't know, yeah,
I describe that, and then it comes with the en
with a total dance funk. Okay. So my feeling on
this song is that the bass line overwhelms the song
main don't but no No, Main New bound Down. I mean,
it's just in your face if you had that organ
instead of that synthesizer there, or even just a piano
or something. I don't know that. It's just it kind
of misses the mark for me. Okay, that's fair, that's fun.
Speaker 2: This song was written and originally produced by George Michael,
like we said, and released only in the US and Australia.
I don't really get that. I don't know why you
record companies do these types of things. Either release it
or don't release it. But anyway released October thirtieth, nineteen
eighty seven. It released it. It reached the top five
on the US Hot Dance Club Songs chart and it
was the top It was in the top forty of
the US R and B chart. So this song was
the B side of the I Wancher Sex single and
when they released Hard Day as a single. On the
B side of Hard Day was an extended version of
I Want Your six. So the lyrics are addressed to
a woman that the singer is like obsessed with. But
in the last verse, George Michael is like singing a
duet with himself, so it's it's his male voice and
then this sped up, pitched up version of himself as
the female.
Speaker 1: Okay, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, listen
to this sweet.
Speaker 2: Little mouths and gets in the when the people don't understand.
Speaker 1: You're telling me that this is George Michael.
Speaker 2: That's yes, no freaking way, yes, yes, And you know
where he got the idea from, Dodge Prince.
Speaker 1: I'm blown away right now. I was going to look
and see who the who the duet was with and
you're telling me the girl at the end of this
song is not a girl, it's George Michael.
Speaker 2: Yes, that's exactly right.
Speaker 1: That's fan freakantastic. Okay, my mind is blown, So.
Speaker 2: Unpack this with me for just a second. So we
know George Michael is a big fan of Prince. Prince's
Sign of the Times album came out in spring of
eighty seven.
Speaker 1: Prince foreshadowing, by the way, quick foreshadowing, We're doing Sign
of the Times in a future episode versus you to
the Joshua Tree.
Speaker 2: Awesome. I can't wait to get into that one.
Speaker 1: But oh, it's gonna be fantastic, but I'm sorry. So
George Michael is listening to Prince do some stuff off
of Sign of the Times and comes up with this idea.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Prince had this alter ego, this female version of
himself that he called Camille, and so when he would
sing these female parts, he would raise and pitch up
his voice. If you're familiar with the song, you got
the look that he sings with Sheena Easton. Yes, it's
that's Camille. And he had this whole album planned where
he was going to sing as Camille. So anyway, George Michael,
being enamored with Prince thought, I'm gonna give that a try.
He actually does it a little bit on a watcher
sex if you go back and listen to that. But
this song in particular, anyway, that is him singing as
the female part.
Speaker 1: That is that's amazing. That's some solid that's a solid
bit of producing right there. I had no idea. I
thought it was a real girl singing that part. I'm
just floored. Thank you, thank you for blowing my mind today.
Speaker 2: Yes, you're welcome.
Speaker 1: Moving on. Next song is hand him out? Okay, so
is this intro is in? I have an expectation of
a song, right you get very the drums are solid
in here, and then you get the piano coming in,
and then you get that bass again that I thought
was kind of overwhelming on hard day. But it's not
so overwhelming. It's just a simple bassline and then the
lyrics I love in his voice. I love, but this
melody doesn't belong with these drums, Like I feel like
it was a great song that somebody bought brought a
drum machine to and it's like, oh hey, let's put
these drums to this. And if I was there in
the studio. I'd be like, yeah, that's a nice trick,
but take that crap out of here. This is good.
They don't need these drums in here. This is like
in the Ghetto by Elvis. This needs to be slowed
down a little bit, have real instruments and no drums
and then it's fantastic.
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, okay, yeah, I think that's I think that's good.
Speaker 1: I could see that the choice to leave the drums
in I think it was a bad choice. And I've
heard him. I try to look. Once I heard the song,
I was like, I know he did an MTV unplugged,
I know he did some other stuff maybe, and he did,
and I'm TV unplugged in this of this song, and
it sounds better because he's got pianos in there instead
of the synthesizer, but it's still got the drums in there.
And I'm just like, no, this if I could, you know,
if I had these tracks that I could break up
I boot that drum. I would make it a real
piano and not this synthesizer. And if you had that,
you got a fan freakantastic song. As it is, I'm
gonna listen to it for about a minute, and I'm
gonna get tired of this repetitive drum beat and I'm
gonna fast forward.
Speaker 2: Okay, okay, all right, So this song to me is
is close to like Michael Jackson's Liberian Girl. It's good,
but it never really quite gets off the ground for me.
It's I think it finishes strong musically, it's just kind
of jazzy and light, and his vocals never really it's
kind of more breathy, and it doesn't really like put
the throttle down, you know. Okay, I've got something for
you on this tell me if I'm off bass. So
they have the drum kit at the beginning that just
kind of the.
Speaker 1: Right yep.
Speaker 2: Then it comes in with the piano, that piano line
and it just kind of repeats. That sounds very similar
to the piano line in Computer Blue by Prince. Different tone,
same line, I think, see what you think?
Speaker 1: Yeah, so that little bit, that little bit at the beginning, Yeah,
it's the same. It sounds like the same notes, but
Prince is cutting it short, whereas George Michael completes the
completes the phrase on the on the music for sure.
Speaker 2: Okay, cool, So I'm not off bas on that that
sounded very.
Speaker 1: At all, No, very similar. Okay, So this song is
different from the other songs on the album because it's
kind of a social commentary. This isn't about sex, this
isn't about love, this isn't about relationships. This is about
people on the streets, people who lose themselves to poverty
and to drugs, and that's that kind of thing, and
where their children are left. It's definitely an entirely different
storyline than the other stuff that we have on this album.
And that that's that's a part that I like. I mean,
I think that that that the lyrics and the meaning
behind the lyrics are solid. Again, I just think that
the instrumentation they missed the they missed the mark on it.
Next track on the CD tape or LP is look
at Your Hands.
Speaker 2: So this one's a little bluesy. There's more horn. It's
interesting to see how he moves from ballad to dance
song to jazz. We haven't got to yet and this
is more blues.
Speaker 1: Wow, this is this is similar to an excess. This
has a very in excess kick feel about it. I
like this song.
Speaker 2: Okay. When I first listened to it, I thought to myself.
It sounds a little bit like Bruce Willis and respect yourself.
Speaker 1: So this song is the only song that has a
co writer. This one was co written by George Michael
and a guy named David Austin. It's got the rock,
it's got the saxophone in there like the Xcess has,
and then the piano like it. Yeah, this is strong
in excess to me, strong in excess feel on this one?
Speaker 2: Interesting? Okay?
Speaker 1: Cool. Sometimes it just takes hearing a song about four
or five times and then you fall in love with it.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: That happens to me quite a little bit actually.
Speaker 1: So this song is about a guy who is unhappy
with is unhappy with the way that his ex girlfriend's
life has turned out. He got two fat children and
a drunken man. Bet you don't, bet you don't like
your life. Uh So this one's I don't know if
this one is pleading with her or if it's just yeah,
I know he's just he says, I still want you tonight.
So yeah, he's telling her she's made a big mistake.
Your kids are brats and your your man's a dirty drunk.
You should be with me. That's I love that's some
that's some solid, all right. So this one is back
to the funk. You're right, yeah, I love it. I
mean this is the eighties music that I go back
to and revisit and I'm just like, yeah, give me
eighties all about it.
Speaker 2: So this song is called Monkey. This is the sixth
single released July third, nineteen eighty eight. This one hit
number one on the Hot one hundred. Man, this is
just a string of number one hits. The song on
the LP is not as good as the song in
the video, so it's two different versions of it. Okay,
so this song.
Speaker 1: Listening to the one in the video.
Speaker 2: So the album he had to finish because he was
on a deadline. So he got these two producers, Jimmy
jam and Terry Lewis to work on the track after
he heard what they did for the song Nasty by
Janet Jackson. So they had done songs by New Edition,
Robert Palmer, the Human League, like I said, they did
Nasty for Janet Jackson. They ended up doing black Cat
off of her Rhythmnation album. Michael told the pair that
he had envisioned Monkey being more melodic with chords, but
he was on a deadline when he recorded, so he
didn't have the time to do it properly. Jam and
Lewis completely reworked the song and they even got George
Michael to re record his vocals. So the song that
you hear on MTV that was played a ten thousand times,
that was the Jimmy Jam Terry Lewis version, and I
liked that version much better.
Speaker 1: So as long as we're talking about the video, have
you seen the hat that he's wearing in.
Speaker 2: The Can we please go?
Speaker 1: I'm glad?
Speaker 2: So this music video directed again by Andy Morahan. It
was choreographed by Paul Abdul.
Speaker 1: How many times has a made appearance on our podcast?
Speaker 2: Was Nuklalush paula Abduel? George Michael. Yeah, So it's intercut
with him in his concert footage and he looks awesome.
The denim jacket's running around singing looking cool, and then
they interspliced the white shirt and black hat, which I'm like,
oh man, not a good look for him.
Speaker 1: Think about this, Think about this? Okay. There were guys
that existed in nineteen eighty seven nineteen eighty eight that
knew that girls liked George Michael, and they knew that
George Michael wore that hat, and so they went out
and bought a hat so that they could look like
George Michael.
Speaker 2: Yes, I think you are probably right about that.
Speaker 1: They also wore suspenders with blue cheeses.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, and the five o'clock shadow was definitely in
during this summer. So when this song, when I'm fourteen,
fifteen years old, I don't really know what a monkey is.
I don't understand and it I don't get the reference.
But the song is about a drug habit. The monkey
on your back is a drug habit. Do you love
your drug habit or do you love me?
Speaker 1: It's interesting that that's what this is about, because George
Michael admittedly had a pretty significant drug habit at the
time that this this album came out, like he and
his girlfriend that he had picked up from the eyewinter
Sex video were doing ecstasy and drinking heavily every single day.
Speaker 2: Okay, number one hit Super Fun Dance eighties.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'll turn it on. I like it.
Speaker 2: It's good, I like it.
Speaker 1: So this single was released in nineteen eighty eight, and
it reached number one on the US Billboard Hot one
hundred and number thirteen on the UK Singles Chart. Monkey
debuted at number forty two on July ninth, and by
August twenty seventh, nineteen eighty eight, it was number one
and it stayed there for two weeks. So with this,
he joined Michael jacks and Whitney Houston as three artists
who had four or more consecutive number one singles during
the nineteen eighty seven eighty eight era. From one album.
Speaker 2: Michael Jackson had five number one hits from Bad Flashback
to Our Bad Episode episode two.
Speaker 1: Whitney Houston had seven.
Speaker 2: That's incredible. It's incredible.
Speaker 1: It was off two albums. But that's pretty that's pretty impressive.
Speaker 2: It's impressive.
Speaker 1: Monkey also reached number one on the US Hot Dance
Club Play chart, and it was his first dance number
one when they released the single version was that remixed
version by Jimmy jam and Terry Lewis.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's the better version for sure.
Speaker 1: Last song on the vinyl, but not the last song
if you had a CD or a cassette and that
song is Singapore.
Speaker 2: It's beautiful. Another stone cold killer on this album. So
Kissing the Fool was the seventh single released November twenty
first nineteen eighty eight. This song, to me sounds something
like Harry Connick Junior would sing. It's definitely more jazz.
Speaker 1: This is what I wanted for Hard Day. If they
had done Hard Day like this, Hard Day could have
potentially been another number one head. I think we know
that with pop in the eighties, you're gonna use synthesizers,
you're gonna use drum machines. But George Michael is saying
on this particular song, I don't even have to do that, right.
I can give you. I can give you old school piano,
old school stand up bass, and me singing the blues,
and you're gonna follow him off.
Speaker 2: According to George Michael, the vocals were recorded a cappella
one take one take Wow Somewhere Joe Elliott is crying
when he hears that.
Speaker 1: I was drinking himself to sleep.
Speaker 2: This album was originally supposed to be called Kissing It Full.
That was the working title for the album for a
long time until at the last minute they kind of
changed it to Faith.
Speaker 1: So this was the least successful of the singles released.
It made it to number eighteen on the UK Singles
Chart and it became the first single in five, not
to make number one on the Billboard Hot one hundred
in the US, but it was number one on the
Hot Adult Contemporary Tracks and became number five on the
Billboard Hot one hundred.
Speaker 2: So the best part to me this song is when
the big band jumps in at the end and the
vocals take off at that.
Speaker 1: It's interesting that you say that it kind of reminds
you of Harry Connic. The song was actually covered by
Michael Bubla, and it is whereas you can listen to
so many of the songs on this album and go, yeah, okay,
this is kind of dated. I can say this is eighties.
This song is timeless.
Speaker 2: It is timeless. Yeah, okay, great song. I love this song.
It's beautiful.
Speaker 1: How did it feel when you were running and listening?
Speaker 2: Yes? Again, a little bit weird exercising while listening to
this album. Okay. So that brings us to the last
song on the tape, at least a last request, I
Want Your Sex Part three.
Speaker 1: We think I was trying to pressure you into sex
and apparently didn't work. So let me make last request.
This song probably should have happened even less than I
Want Your Sex Part two? Give it up? I mean,
just let it go. She's not interested.
Speaker 2: She's very tired and has a hitdache.
Speaker 1: And again this horribly dated with this synthier and drum
machine drums.
Speaker 2: So I've seen enough cinemax after dark movies. This this
has the feel.
Speaker 1: I don't know if that's a confession you want to
make on the air, bro.
Speaker 2: This has the cinemax after a dark type.
Speaker 1: You're saying this is the eighties version of boun Oh.
That's hilarious.
Speaker 2: It's got kind of a sexy beat the horns. I
think that as the song closes, it sounds a little
bit like You Belong to the City by Glenn Frye.
This song needed to be trimmed. This is not a
worthy track on Faith No.
Speaker 1: They wisely left it off of the LP. I'm not
sure why they brought it back for the CD and
the tape as a bonus track. I don't know.
Speaker 2: So I did want to bring this up. I don't
know if we really got into this when we covered
I Want Your Sex. For a song to show up
in three parts on an album, I mean it was
a huge hit. Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying
it wasn't big hit, but for three versions of basically
the same song, and then from this point on he
ignores it. They don't play it live, he doesn't mention it,
he didn't talk about it. It's very interesting his relationship
with that song.
Speaker 1: Okay, we're getting big picture here, and I'm going to
say this. He reinvents himself. And he does that deliberately,
at least throughout the eighties, right, I mean, and when
he does his next album, the first video that comes out,
he's blowing up the jacket, he's blowing up the jukebox,
he's blowing up the guitar. I mean, he's getting rid
of all of that. He's like, that ain't me. You're
not going to define me. That's not who I am.
I can do it all. I am not just a
pop person. I'm not just a I want your sex person,
not sex symbol only. I'm not any of those things.
You can't put me in a box. And so I'm
going to redefine myself. And when we talked about Michael Jackson,
I talked about how I didn't feel like Bad was
a better album because I felt like it was really
just a thriller part two, which I mean, thriller is fantastic,
So why not make a part two? But there are
certain artists out there who refuse to do that. George
Michael is obviously one of those guys. Prince is obviously
one of those guys. You've noted a couple times that
he took a cue from Prince, and I think he
totally did that big picture wise with his albums as well.
Prince is not making Purple Rain Part two with Sign
of the Times. He's making something wholly different, Ye wholly different,
And that's something admirable to be able to go, Hey,
I'm going to be a completely different type of artists
and I'm still gonna make hits. That's something impressive.
Speaker 2: It is impressive. It is impressive, and I marvel at
not only did he completely change his image from this
album to the next album, but he weaves his way
in and out of different genres of music on this album,
Like we said, dance, pop, rock, jazz, gospel.
Speaker 1: How many different categories of music did he write a
hit for?
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, so rap? Initially his first success was
in rap, bubblegum pop with wham right, I mean mainstream pop, rock, jazz,
R and B, R and B adult contemporary dance, dance,
fun funk.
Speaker 1: It's pretty, it's pretty freaking impressive, it's super pretty freaking impressive.
Speaker 2: And the guy's got a voice like an angel. So
this is kind of moving us into the impact and
the reception that the Faith album had. It won the
Grammy for Album of the Year from the nineteen eighty
nine American Music Awards. He won Favorite Pop Rock Male Artists,
Favorite Soul R and B Male Artists, which we need
to talk about, and Favorite Soul R and B Album
for Faith. There was some backlash on this. Interesting so
a white artist winning the R and B Best Artist Award,
this was not looked upon very favorably. Although it's admirable
that he crossed over into black audiences, he made it.
The album was number one on the R and B charts,
and for him to be the first white solars to
do that super impressive. But people like Gladys Knight was
very vocal and criticized him for that, even though it's
not his fault, all right, I do think it's interesting
when he when he sang Careless Whisper as the last
song on the last concert of the Faith tour, he
said to himself, I don't know if I'll ever do
this again. For him to work so hard, gain so
much success and get to the top and say I'm
not sure I'm going to do this ever again kind
of interesting.
Speaker 1: It is. It's crazy. So just to touch on the
awards real quick, okay, yep nominated for Album of the
Year and one Yes Father Figure was nominated for Best
Pop Vocal Performance by a Male. This also received the
Favorite Soul R and B Album for the American Music Awards,
as well as the Favorite Soul R and B Male
Artists MTV Video Music Awards. Both Faith and Father Figure
were nominated, and Father Figure one for Best Direction in
a Video, Father Figure one for Best Direction in a Video.
He had other nominations, but ultimately he received the Video
Vanguard Award and he won. For the brit Awards, won
Best British Male Artist.
Speaker 2: It's impressive. I mean, that's a heck of a year, man. Yeah,
I was gonna mention this too. Faith was the best
selling album of nineteen eighty eight in the United States,
eleven million copies in the United States alone, twenty million
copies of Face sold worldwide. That's the fifty second best
selling album of all time. In the US.
Speaker 1: Okay, wow, yeah.
Speaker 2: So this is an interesting tidbit just regarding the show
That you Can't Be Serious podcast. Okay, So Faith was
the number one selling album of nineteen eighty eight, covered
by The Shore that you Can't Be Serious Podcast. The
number two best selling album of eighty eight the Dirty
Dancing Soundtrack, which we have slated sometime maybe in twenty
twenty one. Number three that year, Hysteria covered by The
Shore That you Can't Be Serious Podcast, Number four, Kick,
number five bad, and number six appatit for destruction.
Speaker 1: Well, we don't pick losers. We don't pick losers.
Speaker 2: That's right. Debbie Gibson at number seven, I'm not sure
that was going to make the.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, dude, We're definitely doing a Debbie Gibson versus
Tiffany episode. It's gonna happen, right.
Speaker 2: We've got to talk a little bit about sort of
the tragedy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, all right, So all the success in the
world can always save you. Tragically, with both of the
bands that we're comparing, we lose an artist without comparison.
The world has lost something special in both of their deaths.
Speaker 2: And it's tragic, true, it is. It is so Georgia.
Michael died Christmas Day, twenty sixteen, at age fifty three.
The autopsy report was indeterminable, but I think it's just
in general, drugs and alcohol got him in the end.
Michael Hutchins died November twenty second, nineteen ninety seven.
Speaker 1: His death was very unusual. He had, in all respects,
appeared to be in a good mood. He had plans
to do work with other artists. And you know, they
say this stuff all the time about people who commit suicide,
but with his particular situation, it does seem very strange
that he would have committed suicide. But he had become
involved in a relationship with Bob Geldolf's wife, Paula Yates,
and she was leaving Bob, and there were custody battles
going on in their divorce, and there was a plan
that she and her children, as well as the child
that she had with Michael Hutchins, Tiger Lily, We're supposed
to come to be with him over the Christmas holiday,
and because of the divorce dispute, that they were not
able to come. She called and gave him that news.
He became very depressed. This was all within the span
of a day, became very depressed, called a couple of
different people to tell them what was going on and
how he was feeling. And one of those people even
came to the hotel room that he was staying in
and knocked on the door to come and talk to him,
even though it was in the wee hours of the morning,
and she didn't get a response and so left, and sadly,
that next morning they found him hanging in his closet.
It's again, not some thing that they thought was foul play,
but something that a lot of folks had trouble believing
was deliberate, despite the fact that he appeared to be
completely alone. So I don't you know, I don't want
to speculate on it, but the thing is, we lost
again another truly great artist. And on that happy note,
how about we do some vile.
Speaker 2: Y all right, thank you, Let's transition to something a
little happier. Final judgment, where are you? No?
Speaker 1: You go first?
Speaker 2: You want me to go first?
Speaker 1: All right?
Speaker 2: So these two albums I owned both, I love both. However,
I think that Faith has some songs that needed to
be cut. It brings down the album as a whole.
Some of these just kind of hanger ons. I do
think Faith gets a lot of credit with me for
having so many songs, so many different genres, different styles,
certainly styles that were not my favorite at the time.
Jazz was not something I listened to typically, but through
Kissing a Fool I was introduced to that. But a
lot of great songs. I don't think Faith has aged
quite as well. I love every song on Kick. I
could pop it in. I could definitely go jogging to
Kick a little bit easier than I could Faith. But
my vote as a whole, Kick is the better album,
not a bad song on it. Ye.
Speaker 1: Okay. When we started this podcast, I had a decision
in my head. I knew what I was picking in
my head, right. Yeah, And as with many things, as
we revisit and we listen, and we go through the
entire album, and things appeal to you more on the
second or third or the fourth listen, your perspective's change. Now.
I'm a rock guy. I am not a pop guy.
I like some pop music, and that's I mean, I'm
not a snob about it. It's just not my thing, right,
And so what I have to do in my head
is I have to take that out and say, okay,
take your presuppositions and your predispositions away and look at
these albums side by side for what they were. And
even though probably song wise I'm going to pick in
excess kick, Never Tear Us Apart is I've said my
favorite song. If you put all of these songs up
on the board, I'm writing number one, next two, Never
Tear Us Apart and Devil Inside and Need You Tonight
are both fantastic songs. New Sensation What Yes lows my
mind and it's rock, which I love, right, but it's
all rock. And so when we listen to Guns n'
Roses versus Back in Black, what did I say? I said,
Appetite for Destruction was better than Back in Black because
it had variety, it had variation. And so even though
when we started I knew I was picking an excess kick,
I gotta say today I'm picking George Michael Faith love It.
Number one hit after number one hit after number one
hit in completely different genres you have. I mean, I've
got songs on there that I don't like. I would
have redone them and done them a completely different way.
But when you look at these albums as a whole.
George Michael has produced a better product. And that's the
way people felt in nineteen eighty eight, nineteen eighty nine,
and I gotta say they were right. If you if
you take out the ones that are dated and you
put them next to the next to these songs from Kick,
taking out the ones that are dated, I still say,
I'm gonna have to say that Faith wins today.
Speaker 2: Wow, I love it, man, that's great. It's crazy for me.
Speaker 1: I would never have expected it. Yeah, I would never
have expected to pick that. Never I'm I'm still I'm
probably going to wake up tomorrow and I'm probably gonna
wake up in the middle of the night and go,
what the crap did I just say? Because I love Kick,
I love the rock and the ah. Man, I'm wavering already.
I'm starting to waffle. We better turn the microphones off before.
Speaker 2: Hey. I think it's cool for us to grow as
we rediscover these albums together. So hopefully there's somebody out
there who listened to the podcast who changed their mind.
I think that's great when people hit us up on
Facebook and they say, hey, I initially thought this, and
now I think that I just.
Speaker 1: I would like to point out that. This is kind
of momentous because as far as pop and rock are concerned,
you're the pop guy and I'm the rock guy. If
we got to say one's sure, that's true. I just
picked the pop I just picked the pop album, and
you picked the rock album.
Speaker 2: I know, I know. Hey yeah that's called growth.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, tell us what you guys think. Am
I crazy? Is Jason crazy? Are they? Is it an
unanswerable question which of these two albums are better? It
might be, but sometimes you just got to put your
foot down and say this is the way it is.
Speaker 2: That's great.
Speaker 1: I feel Jason has been fun.
Speaker 2: Yep, de tax you next week.
Speaker 1: Al right, bye,