Speculations and lamentations are useless because, in reality, the artists so we should not be nothing, not explanations, not even more music. We is that to them we owe much. Bruno Vieira Amaral remembers why.
everyone knows the "Club of 27" – Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin, Kurt Cobain and Amy Winehouse – but the "Club of 2016" do not you should anything: David Bowie, Prince, Leonard Cohen and, now, George Michael. And the year’s not over yet. You can’t say that they were at the peak of his career: despite continuing to record, Bowie there’s much that gave concerts; Prince gave concerts but there is much that is not recorded an album with significant impact and only Leonard Cohen, curiously, the oldest of the four, continued to record and give concerts, even though his best work had already had a few years.
The case of George Michael shuts down other curiosities: not released a studio album since 2004 and, unlike Bowie, for example, continued to give concerts and to be news tabloid by the recurring problems with the authorities. In 2011, during a tour in Europe, he was interned in a hospital in austria with pneumonia. Fared a close call. The question was: any time George Michael would be the one that had been? But, after all, what is it that George Michael had been?
In 1996, Robbie Williams, former member of the boy band Take That, he launched a solo career. The prospects were not encouraging. Nicky Wire, bassist of Manic Street Preachers, said in an interview that Williams was so bad that, to start his new adventure, he had chosen a song from another person. The song, for those of you who don’t remember, it was "Freedom", an original by George Michael. Sarcasm aside, the choice was a certain sense. Of the five elements of the band, Robbie Williams was not, so to say, the most gifted, artistically speaking. The great hope was Gary Barlow, whose solo career, contrary to expected, quickly sank to the bottom. The choice of "Freedom" was, therefore, a declaration of principles: Williams wanted to free itself from the image of idol of the teenagers and move on to another level. Chose a song that spoke of freedom and that it was authored by the ideal model of this passage, a crowd of teenagers hysterical for an adult audience sophisti cated: George Michael.
[the version of Robbie Williams for "Freedom"]
Locks, bronzed mediterranean, shorts ultrashort, bright white teeth and pop songs so contagious that could be included in the list of diseases of the WHO: "Club Tropicana", "Young Guns (Go For It!)" and "Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go". So it was that the Wham!, the double composed by Andrew Ridgeley and George Michael, conquered the world in the early 80′s. The music videos had any thing of eternal Summer and carefree, as an advertisement of Coca-Cola with the "feeling of living". Was irresistible but, that pace was a thing not to last more than two or three summers. The band’s second album, Make it Big, 1984, included the universal "Careless Whisper", which already pointed out a new path, a path that George Michael would go alone: more soulful, more serious, more adult. However, they had already released the one that will be perhaps the greatest modern classic of Christmas, "Last Christmas", a song that will be sung as long as there is p inheirinhos, gifts and Father Christmas.
In 1987, in anticipation of his first solo album, George Michael recorded a duet with the queen of R&B, Aretha Franklin, clearly showing where I want to go, musically speaking. "Faith," this debut album has been a huge success around the world and catapulted George Michael to the heights of super-stardom and super-controversial. "I Want Your Sex", the first single extracted from the album, a song that today even in the seems to candida, has been banned from many radios for the explicit lyrics. While George Michael was still greater than the Wham! had been, Andrew Ridgeley retired to a quiet farm in Cornwall, where still today live, far from the limelight, and to live the rights of the songs of the duo. Several times, Michael regretted not having taken the same decision to retire, but at the time, it would be difficult to realize that the path of glory and self-destruction were the same.
["I Want Your Sex" of George Michael]
the release of The album Listen without Prejudice Vol.1, in 1990, was a turning point even more pronounced in the career of George Michael. In search of respect for the artistic, disappeared of their own videos – a heresy for a sex symbol whose image warranty, for only, a few million copies sold – and, shortly after, launched a war suicidal against their label, Sony, who accused him of not promoting it properly (in the video for "Fastlove" in 1996, which arise from a headphone of the brand "Fony"). The battle dragged on for several years in the courts and, in the end, whoever lost was the singer. For six years, has not released any album, although if you have kept on top thanks mainly to two moments: a duet with Elton John on this song, "Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me", and the extraodinária performance in the tribute concert to Freddie Mercury, where it broke with the scale to sing the hymn the gospel "Somebody to Love".
Then, in 1996, returned in a big way with Older, the first disc of DreamWorks Records David Geffen, an album marked by mourning for the death of her boyfriend but also reveals an artistic maturity. Even not knowing a global success equivalent to that of the previous albums, Older gave 6 singles that entered the top 3 in the table of Uk sales, a feat that has not yet been equalled. The album was dedicated to Anselmo Feleppa, the companion who had died three years before, and, for the musician, the songs had so many references to love in the male that he felt that he was to assume his sexuality without having to reveal it directly to journalists.
which turned out to happen in 1998, with the famous incident of the bathroom in Los Angeles. The way how he dealt mediaticamente with the episode is a lesson in public relations. Unlike the celebrities who, nowadays, in the era of social networks, ask for excuse for everything and for nothing, do true acts of contrition for any conduct less appropriate, or even by an unhappy phrase, George Michael spoke openly about the case (see the interview with David Lettermann, in which joked at the to consider the squadron of Beverly Hills the best of all the western world, and spoke without modesty of their sex habits) and gave back to the text with the video of the song Outside, refusing to either the role of guilty, whether the victim role.
however, in the whole process something broke, because it’s actually George Michael never reached the same artistic level. From 1998 to 2016, has released just one more studio album, Patience (2004) and, in recent years, the singer has been in the news more for issues with the authorities of that by his work: he was detained for several times in possession of drugs and was banned from driving for five years. In 2011, had to cancel their european tour because of pneumonia, which left him between life and death.
For all this, can not say that the death of George Michael is a surprise. Of the times the celebration of Wham!, when he was a young gay in the closet, to the more serious moments of his solo career (such as "Jesus to a Child"), and already after assuming his homosexuality, the public figure George Michael was becoming progressively dark and one easy and honest smile that was his trademark became a ricto hard-working and mandatory. In an interview with the Guardian in 2009, itself recognized that there was a force self-destructive with which dealt mainly with drugs, which, in turn, worsened their problems. It was an effort to work and back to active, but something about going back to the black hole of depression.
it’s Not worth to speculate about what killed him because, whatever it has been, it began to kill him a long time ago. Also not worth regret everything that we did not because, in the example of Bowie, Prince and Cohen, left enough to be remembered with admiration. And the speculation and the laments are also useless because, in reality, artists such as George Michael don’t owe nothing, neither explanations, nor even more music. We is that to them we owe much. Perhaps that is the reason of our sadness when they leave: you have a debt that now can’t pay.
Bruno Vieira Amaral is a literary critic, translator, and author of the novel "First Things", prize winner José Saramago in 2015
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