Overreaching? Critics might have said so. George Michael, in other words, fucked up: at a time when Faith granted him supernatural powers, he should’ve released a double album of ballads and dance material. Where once fans had to buy used copies of 1992’s Red Hot + Dance for “Do You Really Want to Know” and “Happy,” now they can appreciate how proximity to Michael’s covers of Stevie Wonder and Gladys Knight and the Pips underscores the rhythmic finesse of even the quietest material. Thanks to a four-disc reissue complete with remixes, documentary footage, and Michael’s 1996 “Unplugged” episode, audiences can hear what Sony had wanted in the Listen Without Prejudice project: a collection of variegated hues in which the pleasures of the flesh co-exist with a deepening spiritual malaise. It killed the pop singer’s American career momentum. A legal battle between Sony and Michael then followed, worthy of Bleak House. At the time, unconfirmed rumors suggested Michael had canned an album’s worth of dance material. 1 came out in September 1990, preceded by its lilting acoustic single “Praying for Time.” The latter topped the chart for a week without fuss, notwithstanding a despairing vocal drenched in echo, reminiscent of Plastic Ono Band-era John Lennon, and a lyric that heaped scorn on the rich who “declare themselves poor” while the rest of us hang on to hope “when there is no hope to speak of.” Fans, disappointed by Michael’s folly, clung to the “Vol. That “Heaven Help Me” and “Kissing a Fool” did well no doubt reassured the hyperventilating Columbia record execs when, 18 months after the Estus single, Listen Without Prejudice, Vol.
A featherlight stab at sophisti-pop (trumpet solos, plucked guitar), “Heaven Help Me” served as testament to Michael’s multi-format ambition and do-no-wrong commercial instincts. It sailed into the top five in the spring of 1989, less than six months after “Kissing a Fool,” the last single from Michael’s blockbuster Faith.
At the time, his most recent hit was “Heaven Help Me,” sung and co-written by his bassist Deon Estus.
For Michael, as ever, announcements traveled subtlest as music.
0 kommentar(er)
