In my previous post I remarked, as many others have done, on the number of major artists in popular music who had died this year, and in passing I mentioned the possibility that since the year wasn’t over, there was still a chance that one or more major artists might yet die. That turned out to be the case, as this past Christmas weekend, George Michael unexpectedly joined the list that already included David Bowie, Glenn Frey of the Eagles, Prince, Beatles producer George Martin, both Keith Emerson and Greg Lake (two thirds of Emerson, Lake and Palmer), Leonard Cohen and many more. Of course, despite the superstitious nonsense some people are spreading, these deaths are not due to a curse or anything silly like that. It is just an unfortunate coincidence, and given the ages of many famous artists who are still living, it is likely that some year in the near future will have at least nearly as many top artists dying, not to mention the fact that which artists qualify as major artists is necessarily subjective.
However, few people would dispute that George Michael (born Georgios Panayiotou) was a major artist, and his death was more of a surprise than, say, Leonard Cohen’s, as Michael was only 53, even younger than Prince. I didn’t have all of his albums, but I did have several of them, and I’d long considered him to have one of the best voices in pop. Interestingly, one of the few singers I’d rate above him, Freddie Mercury of Queen (whose mother Jer Bulsara also died recently), named Michael along with Aretha Franklin as one of his favorite singers, and Michael in turn did the best job taking Freddie’s place in performing Queen’s songs at the Freddie Mercury Memorial Concert. But aside from being a very good singer, Michael was also a capable songwriter. Not everything he wrote was great, but he did write a number of excellent songs. While since what he was writing was pop music, his melodies were generally what got the most attention, he also wrote some excellent lyrics from time to time. “Praying for Time”, for instance, is very well written, and “I Want Your Sex (Part 1)” has a lot of clever lines.
The following is a list of my favorite George Michael songs, basically the ones I’d put on my own “Best of George Michael”. I made one list of the ones I consider indispensable and a second of the songs I’d choose from to fill out a full CD. Since I don’t have his last album, Patience, I didn’t include anything from that, though eventually I’d like to check it out and possibly revise this list. I did listen to a few later songs over the last couple of days, though not enough to decide for certain which I’d want to include in a “best of”, though I did add 2006’s “An Easier Affair” to my secondary list. When Wham was popular I wasn’t really paying much attention to pop music, so I only heard a few of their songs at the time, though I heard more afterwards and I now have a copy of their compilation The Final. I probably could have included more songs from that era, but I decided to mainly concentrate on his solo songs, though I had to include my favorite Wham songs “Freedom” and “Everything She Wants”, and I added a few more into my second tier list. Faith is the album I was most familiar with, so inevitably there are quite a few songs from that, and really all of the singles from it are pretty good, as is the album track “Hand to Mouth”. “Kissing a Fool” is probably my favorite here, though “I Want Your Sex (Part 1)” and “Faith” are close. But there’s also some filler, while pretty much everything on his second solo album Listen without Prejudice Vol. 1 is good. “Praying for Time” is probably my favorite on this album, though “Heal the Pain” and “Waiting for That Day” are also great, and some of the others are close behind. The songs on his third album Older are generally also pretty good, though for some reason few of them really grabbed me the way the best ones on his previous albums did, and so most of them didn’t make the list here, though several would if I were to make it a double album. I did include his later, tongue-in-cheek single “Outside”, which was also pretty clever.
While for my main lists I stuck to original songs that Michael wrote himself, I made a separate list of some of my favorite covers he’s done (plus his song with Aretha Franklin, which while original he didn’t write). This is necessarily incomplete, as he’s done many covers I haven’t heard, including a whole album of them, but it would make a nice EP companion to the main set.
The Best of George Michael
Indispensable Tracks
Freedom
Everything She Wants
I Want Your Sex
Faith
Kissing a Fool
Praying for Time
Waiting for That Day
Heal the Pain
Other Top Tracks
I’m Your Man
A Different Corner
Careless Whisper
Hand to Mouth
Monkey
One More Try
Freedom ‘90
Mother’s Pride
Jesus to a Child
You Have Been Loved
Outside
An Easier Affair
Top Covers and Duets
I Knew You Were Waiting for Me (with Aretha Franklin)
Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me (with Elton John)
Somebody to Love (with Queen)
As (with Mary K. Blige)
I Can’t Make You Love Me
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