100 Best Albums
- SEP 3, 1990
- 10 Songs
- Make It Big · 1984
- Ladies & Gentlemen: The Best of George Michael · 1984
- Faith (2010 Remastered) · 1987
- Ladies & Gentlemen: The Best of George Michael · 1990
- Faith (2010 Remastered) · 1987
- Faith (2010 Remastered) · 1987
- Older · 1996
- Ladies & Gentlemen: The Best of George Michael · 1986
- Ladies & Gentlemen: The Best of George Michael · 1974
- Older · 1996
Essential Albums
- 100 Best Albums After proving the depth, scope, and maturity of his songwriting with an unassailable debut, George Michael released his second solo album, which feels like a pointed gear change. True, there is “Freedom! ’90”, a bright, piano-driven single designed to deftly skewer both the emerging age of music video culture and Michael’s own conflict about the way the Faith era had almost turned him into a piece of caricatured public property. Nonetheless, the pervading mood of Listen Without Prejudice is one of subtlety, political consciousness, and emotional desolation. Woodwinds evoke sparse battlefields (“Mothers Pride”), echo adds ghostly desperation (most notably on the spine-tingling Stevie Wonder cover, “They Won’t Go When I Go”), and windblown acoustic guitar nods to folk (“Something to Save”). Crowned by the grand, Lennon-ian sweep of “Praying for Time,” it is a quietly radical, deeply affecting creative progression—the sound of an artist retreating from pop’s synth-driven orthodoxy into something touched by timelessness, profundity, and, in almost every sense, real soul.
- You could say that George Michael’s debut solo album is about thematic freedom—a loosening of Wham!’s teen-oriented songwriting shackles and a conscious step into the seamy passions and moral complexity of adulthood. And, yes, fundamentally that checks out. From the sultry, wide-screen gospel of “Father Figure” to the grunt-laden, censor-baiting paean to monogamous desire that is “I Want Your Sex, Pts. 1 & 2,” Faith established a path to artistic seriousness (and, let’s be real, controversy) that many an emancipated commercial pop star went on to emulate. But this record—animated by Prince and Michael Jackson’s critically acclaimed creative breakthroughs and featuring Michael not only producing all the songs but also playing many of the instruments himself—is, in many ways, a preternaturally gifted musician rightly asking for some respect to be put on their name. “Faith” turns a spare rockabilly riff into three minutes of taut, melodic perfection, “One More Try” pairs those signature roller-coaster vocal runs with a pulsing, tear-streaked torch song, and “Hand to Mouth” shows that no one can imbue life’s grimy underbelly with yearning sumptuousness quite like George.
Albums
Artist Playlists
- A towering pop icon's most celebrated solo work.
- A gleeful display of supermodel cameos, leather jackets, and cop cosplay.
- A unique soul with a voice for torch songs, R&B, and hip-hop.
- Artists reveling in the freedom to pursue their pop dreams.
- Unfettered imagination lit by American soul and British glam.
Live Albums
Compilations
- 2006
Appears On
- Waze & Odyssey & Tommy Theo
- Wham!
More To Hear
- An icon proves himself with soul and songwriting.
- Chaka, Missy, Sheryl, and George changed vocals forever.
- Sabi celebrates 35 years of George Michael’s Faith.
- Hattie celebrates the iconic artist.
- The prolific musician and producer is live in studio.
- Elton John pays tribute to his late friend.
About George Michael
In the early ’80s, back when he was in Wham!, George Michael had a stage bit where he’d stick a badminton shuttlecock down his shorts just to make the girls scream. Not that he had to: At the time, girls would’ve screamed watching Wham! brush their teeth. The spell would hold for decades. As a solo artist, Michael could be playful but earnest, erotic but wholesome, a soul singer whose raw sexuality never overwhelmed the sweetness of his spirit. So, yes, he was the shuttlecock. But he was also free concerts for nurses and an anonymous volunteer at a homeless shelter, a gay artist who helped reshape the public perception of LGBTQ+ people in a culture that had only just started to shed its prejudice. Once asked to resolve the perceived contradictions of Faith, Michael wondered what was wrong with loving someone to death and wanting to rip their clothes off at the same time. Born Georgios Panayiotou in London, in 1963, to a Greek Cypriot restaurateur and an English dancer, Michael grew up obsessed by David Bowie and Elton John, artists who blended camp and theatricality with the emotional candidness of a singer-songwriter. He founded Wham! with Andrew Ridgeley in his late teens, becoming one of the most recognized faces in pop. In 1987, he released his solo debut, Faith, a synthesis of ’70s soul and contemporary dance music that became the first album by a white solo artist to top the R&B chart. Listen Without Prejudice Vol. 1 came out in 1990. He recorded and toured throughout the ’90s, while also fighting a legal battle with Sony Records in part over his reluctance to appear in promotional videos—a conscious effort to push against his status as a sex symbol. His last studio album, Patience, came out in 2004. Michael died on Christmas Day 2016. In addition to his extensive formal philanthropy—primarily for children’s causes and HIV/AIDS—he was known for his more intimate gestures of kindness, including once absolving a chunk of student debt for a waitress after overhearing her lament to a friend.
- HOMETOWN
- East Finchley, London, England
- BORN
- June 25, 1963
- GENRE
- Pop