Track #19 - “Freedom ‘90” by George Michael (1990)

From the album Listen Without Prejudice, Vol. 1

Music and lyrics by George Michael

Performed by:

George Michael – lead and backing vocals, keyboard bass, percussion

Danny Cummings – percussion  

Phil Palmer – acoustic and electric guitar

Chris Cameron – piano   

Shirley Lewis – backing vocals

US Billboard Hot 100 - #8; US Billboard Adult Contemporary - #27; US Billboard Dance Club Songs - #16; US Billboard Year-End Hot 100 - #95

Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Songs - #126

Heaven knows I was just a young boy

Didn’t know what I wanted to be

I was every little hungry schoolgirl’s pride and joy

And I guess it was enough for me

To win the race? A prettier face!

Brand new clothes and a big fat place

On your rock and roll TV

But today the way I play the game is not the same

No way

Think I’m gonna get me some happy

Sometimes an artist, band or song needs to grow on me. Sometimes I need to hear something over and over again and literally be worn down until I like it and say, “OK, OK I get it! Now I know why people love this artist/band/song!” In some cases, this takes years. Bruce Springsteen is a perfect example. For years, I didn’t understand what the appeal was, how this singer/songwriter from New Jersey had legions of rabid fans who attended all his live shows and owned all his albums. I used to give my friend Nick a hard time for being one of those rabid fans and told him many times I had no interest in “The Boss.” Nick would try to persuade me to go see one of Springsteen’s live shows, convinced I would become an instant fan if only I witnessed the spectacle that his live shows can be, but I always turned him down. My wife’s boss has seen Springsteen live over 100 times; I would simply scoff whenever I heard that and say, “Who would see that guy over 100 times??” I realize I’m not doing much for my credibility as a music blogger by admitting I’m not a fan of one of the biggest and most admired artists on the planet. But, in the last year or so, I’ve listened to Springsteen here and there and I’ve realized I may have been missing out all this time. Maybe what finally did it was I now see how he is part of the story of American rock music, and that he is literally a regular guy who plays the guitar and writes these memorable, anthemic rock songs. I can see how he speaks for the masses through these songs and more important, I see how he has maintained his energy and creativity for decades; that goes a long way for a judgmental music person like me.  Now I hope I can see him perform live before he inevitably hangs it up; I know I won’t see 100 shows, so I’ll settle for one. So, the skepticism I once had for Bruce Springsteen spanned decades. If you condense that skepticism and make it more intense over a shorter period of time, you may understand my initial dislike of George Michael. By the time Listen Without Prejudice, Vol. 1, Michael’s second solo album, was released in 1990, he was one of the biggest artists in the world. By then, I was a fan, owner, and obsessive listener of his first solo album, 1987’s Faith, one of the best albums of the 1980s. When I heard “Praying for Time”, the first single from Listen Without Prejudice, Vol.1 in 1990 it was definitely a departure from Faith, but I liked that song enough to buy the album, only to have it sit in my CD tower for almost a year, until 1992. It was then, emerging from the mess that was 1991 and a terrible break-up that I began to hear “Freedom ‘90” whenever I went out to bars and clubs with my friends. I rifled through my CD collection and found Listen Without Prejudice and started listening again and realized what an amazing achievement it was, and that George Michael was saying so much with those songs. And when I was trying to get my young life back on track and figuring out what was next, and looking forward to what could be, “Freedom ‘90” from that album became somewhat of an anthem for me. To understand my intersection with and subsequent re-discovery of that song, we’ll need to go back to 1984, when the world was introduced to a pop duo from the UK who sported oversized t-shirts that said “Choose Life” on the front and snapped their fingers on MTV to a ridiculously upbeat song, that at the time, I just wished would go away.

Georgios Kyriacos Panayiotou was the son of a Greek restaurateur and English dancer. In the 1970s, the family moved from just north of London to the small village of Radlett, where he started attending school in Bushey, a London suburb. There, in 1981, he met Andrew Ridgeley, and the two quickly became friends and began performing together, in a ska-based band called The Executive. After that band dissolved, the duo continued to write and record songs together, and changed their name to Wham!, later revealing that they felt this was the sound they made when they performed together. Georgios would also astutely change his name to the much more manageable and easy-to-remember George Michael. Wham! landed a record deal with new label Innervision in 1982, and released their debut album, Fantastic, in 1983, which spent two weeks at #1 in the UK. After the success of Fantastic, Michael and Ridgeley would walk away from the Innervision contract so they could sign with larger label Epic, foregoing their royalties from their debut album. But that would not matter, as Wham! would release Make It Big in 1984 and soon become international superstars. At that time in 1984, MTV had been on the air for about three years, but the period from 1983 to 1984 was truly a watershed period for the fledgling network. During that time Michael Jackson would revolutionize the format by making three groundbreaking videos from his album Thriller and Prince would create hype for his film Purple Rain and the accompanying soundtrack by releasing videos before the actual movie came out. UK acts like Culture Club, Duran Duran and Eurythmics had used MTV to gain exposure in the US by combining their distinctive looks and the stunning visuals of their videos to help market their music. Other artists like The Police, Cyndi Lauper and Madonna would also sell millions of albums by being on heavy rotation on MTV. So, when Wham! and their video for “Wake Me Up Before You Go Go” began making the rounds on MTV, their timing could not have been more perfect. It’s just Michael and Ridgeley performing in front of a small audience, with their backup band and several backup singers and dancers, but the visuals of the white “Choose Life” t-shirts, combined with the non-stop energy made for a memorable video. And the camera clearly loved the duo, Michael in particular. That late summer and fall of 1984, the song was everywhere, and the video was on MTV every hour. I thought it was the most annoying thing I had ever heard. The snapping, the dancing, the cavorting and the stupid t-shirts were just awful to me. Yet, the song went to number one the week of November 17th, 1984. More singles followed from Make It Big: “Careless Whisper” (#1), “Freedom” (#3) , and “Everything She Wants” (#1). The album would go on to sell over 6 million copies in the US alone, and 10 million worldwide. Wham! would also record and release what is now a holiday standard, “Last Christmas”, in late 1984 in the UK, and Michael would appear on Bob Geldof’s Band Aid project that year, and sing a lead part on the charity single, "Do They Know It’s Christmas?” In short, it was a fantastic year for Wham! and George Michael, and even though their music was everywhere, I thought it was all terrible. Except for the Band Aid song, which was not a Wham! track, all I did was tell everyone who would listen to me that Wham! and George Michael were garbage. To escape all this negativity surrounding this music, which was clearly not going away, I came to a conclusion that made me feel better about not liking Wham!: This was music for girls. Yes, I realize this is not enlightened, but to my 14-year-old adolescent lizard brain, it made perfect sense. All the perkiness, the bright clothes, and these two handsome guys jumping around smiling all the time, was geared towards teenage girls, and it was not to be taken seriously. Give me my leather clad heavy metal guys with their flying V guitars, thunderous drums, and bellowing vocals…no snapping or “Jitterbug”’ s here, thank you very much.

So, let’s fast forward to 1987, specifically that summer. I was about to be a high school senior and was working as many hours as possible at a sporting goods store with Darren, my best friend at the time, saving money so I could pay for car insurance. I already had the car (thanks, Dad), and in August I got my driver’s license, so heading into my senior year things were looking up. About a week before school was set to start, Darren and I were at his house, flipping channels and probably killing some time before work when he stopped at MTV, and the video for George Michael’s “I Want Your Sex” was on. At the time, the video was extremely controversial. It features Michael’s real girlfriend at the time, Kathy Jeung, intercut with naked scenes of another Spanish model, to make it look like it was all Jeung. Michael writes “explore” and “monogamy” in lipstick on her thigh and back, and in between Michael dances and sings, and they roll around in black satin sheets. It may as well have been porn back then to two 17-year-old guys who had no access to porn (again, this is way before the internet, kids). We had heard the song before; it was everywhere on the radio that summer and appeared in the movie Beverly Hills Cop 2, with Eddie Murphy, back in May. The record company was forced to release the single early, as radio stations were fielding requests and had the song already in heavy rotation. Despite a daytime airplay ban due to the song’s content, it would eventually go to #2 on the Billboard chart in August. I remember Darren commenting about the pseudo x-rated content of the video and that the song was cool, and my reply of, “Eh, but it’s George Michael….please,” and him telling me I needed to open my mind a little. I scoffed, but I was way ahead of him; I had to admit, I liked it. This was not geared towards a teeny bopper audience or just girls, as my backwards thinking had led me to a few years before; this was not “Wake Me Up Before You Go Go”. There was no snapping or gimmicky t-shirts anywhere. That whole teen idol image that George Michael had cultivated only three years before seemed to be gone. He was definitely saying something here and it got me curious about what his forthcoming solo album might be like. In October, the single and video for “Faith” was released, with its memorable cathedral organ opening, acoustic guitar and Bo Diddley beat, and Michael declaring, “Well I guess it would be nice if I could touch your body…” The video featured Michael playing the guitar and singing in front of a jukebox, but it was his look in the video that remains iconic to this day: the beard stubble, the mirrored aviator sunglasses and cross earring, and the ripped jeans and the studded leather jacket with “REVENGE” embroidered on the back. This was a far different George Michael from the person in the “Choose Life” t-shirt with the feathered hair in 1984, snapping his fingers and flashing a perfect smile. In fact, he doesn’t smile once in the “Faith” video. The lyrics are a declaration of strength of sorts; “Oh when that love comes down without devotion, it takes a strong man baby, but I’m showing you the door.” In other words, I want more than you give, and I don’t care how hot you are, but I’m letting you go. The song was just amazing, and even though I didn’t want to admit it at the time, I really loved it. Of course, the song went to #1, and the album Faith, released in October, would also spawn three more #1 songs: “Father Figure”, “One More Try”, and “Monkey”. Faith has sold over 25 million copies, won the award for Album of the Year at the Grammys in 1988, and is considered one of the greatest albums of the 1980s. When I wrote about Def Leppard back at Track #2, I mentioned what an exceptionally great year it was for music in 1987, and listening to U2, Guns N Roses and later Hysteria, distracted me from buying the Faith album, but in the spring of 1988, I finally relented and bought the cassette in time to take on my senior trip. So, when everyone on the back of my bus was listening to hair metal, most notably White Lion and “The Final Countdown” by Europe, I listened to Faith several times during the seven-hour bus trip to Busch Gardens in Virginia. By that summer, I also owned the CD, and by now I had completely different thoughts about George Michael and his music.

 Anticipation for the follow up to Faith was high when George Michael released Listen Without Prejudice, Vol.1 in late summer of 1990. The first single, “Praying for Time”, with the accompanying video, came out in August, a few weeks before the album. Of course, I was curious, and when I first heard “Praying for Time” I was struck by how different it sounded, let alone what a departure it seemed on the surface from the music on Faith. The music itself was deliberate, and Michael’s voice seemed broader in the mix, and he used an almost soothing, re-assuring tone when he sang, and good thing, because the lyrics were grim: “And it’s hard to love, there’s so much to hate, hanging on to hope, when there is no hope to speak of…” Like I said, grim. The video, directed by Michael Borofsky, is just a black and blue screen, with the lyrics unfolding as the song plays. Interesting, but where was George Michael? He had appeared in all the videos for Faith, so why wasn’t he in this one? When I saw the video for “Freedom ‘90” later that year, I finally got the point. The video is one of the most memorable ever, not only for the content, but for the message it conveys. Directed by David Fincher (Se7en, Fight Club, The Social Network), the video features five of most popular supermodels at the time; Naomi Campbell, Linda Evangelista, Tatjana Patitz, Christy Turlington and Cindy Crawford, along with four male models lip-syncing the song. Aside from a brief shot of him walking through a bedroom and scratching himself through his boxers, George Michael does not appear anywhere in the video; you never see his face. In fact, the famous icons from the “Faith” video are all destroyed: the guitar and jukebox are literally blown up, and the leather “REVENGE” jacket is shown hanging in a closet being consumed by fire. It was an obvious message to me back then. He wanted to break free of the image he created for Faith, and while the music itself was amazing, that image did help sell all those records and associate him with that music, but this time maybe he just wanted the music to be center stage. “Freedom ‘90” is the most upbeat song on the album, and for a few months, I would often put the song on repeat on my CD player. I loved the rhythm arrangements and that gorgeous piano riff. But as I mentioned, as good as Listen Without Prejudice, Vol. 1 was, it soon ended up lost in my CD tower, as the distractions of 1991 piled up.

As I headed into my final semester of college in early 1992 and was preparing to graduate, I was starting to feel like myself again after a difficult 1991. I also went through a bad breakup that January, so once the shock of that wore off, I knew I needed to re-connect with my friends who I had not seen in a couple of years and start getting out again. Luckily, I was able to re-connect with Darren, my close friend from high school, and most of the group I used to hang out with from the neighborhood. Although I had turned 21 in August, I really hadn’t gotten out much to take advantage of finally being of legal age to drink, but soon enough, every Friday and Saturday night I found myself piling into one car or another or driving everyone else to one of the local bars or clubs to drink overpriced beers and blow off steam. At first it was intimidating after being in a relationship for two years to get back out and start socializing again. But I quickly realized that I knew most of the crowd at these spots from the neighborhood; it was almost like a high school reunion every weekend. The guys and I became regulars at one particular bar in the North Shore college town of Stony Brook, called The Park Bench. As bars went, it was a typical college hangout; bar in the middle, some pool tables in a backroom area, and a modest dance floor. The crowd was a combination of kids from the local SUNY school who had fake IDs and 21 and over people from the surrounding towns. We’d see the same faces every week but that was part of the appeal; we knew pretty much everyone, and they knew us so we all knew what we were getting. And they played great music. I was starting to get into some of the dance and hip-hop music from that time. It was impossible not to, hearing it played at the bars and clubs we went to: “Now That We Found Love” by Heavy D., “O.P.P.” by Naughty By Nature, “Sadeness, (Part I)” by Enigma, and an insanely upbeat party track with a bit of a throwback sound by a trio from New York City called “Groove Is In the Heart” are some of the standouts I remember from that early part of 1992. That last one, by Deee-Lite, we’re going to talk about again, wink wink. But there was one Friday night that as one song was ending, I could hear a familiar conga and tambourine beat coming in underneath, and by the time I heard the piano, and then George Michael singing, “Freedom ‘90” was playing over the PA. The Park Bench was crowded I remember, and the place kind of went crazy once the song really started. The real surprise of it though was when Darren said, “Come on!” and then we were all on the dance floor. Was this OK?? Seven straight white guys dancing together, singing, and raising our beers in the air, doing our best to recite the words to “Freedom ‘90”? Apparently it was, because it seemed the whole place was out on the dance floor doing it. After a minute, I just went with it. I knew the words, and this was the best feeling I’d had in a long time. During the chorus, when Michael sings, “…I don’t belong to you, and you don’t belong to me, yeah, yeah, Freedom!”, we sang the loudest, and why not? We were young guys, with our whole lives and the whole world in front of us…it might not ever be better than this, so fuck it, I’m singing and dancing and raising my $5 beer in the air. And for me, finally getting everything back on the rails at home and getting out of a bad relationship, this song, this time, meant everything. It seemed from that night on we heard that song every week, and every time it was the same thing…belting out those lyrics with George Michael and dancing like we owned the place. And Listen Without Prejudice, Vol. 1 finally ended up in my CD player again, and I began to think that maybe I was wrong back in 1984 about Wham!. I’m not saying I ran out and bought Wham! CD’s, but I started to see the progression of George Michael’s songwriting, and how good it was, and what a talented performer he was, and how rare to it was to find that combination. His music is on a lot in our house and I still remember all the words from “Freedom ‘90” and still sing along. And the dance moves? Let’s just say you won’t be seeing any TikTok videos from me anytime soon, but I can still hold my own. 😊 And here are those 90s supermodels lip- syncing "Freedom '90”; go ahead and dance, I know you want to!

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Next time…It’s important to know the title of a song when asking about it at a record store! We meet a singer and two DJ’s from New York City, and their infectious early 90s club hit.

P.S.

 Listen Without Prejudice, Vol.1 would end up selling 8 million copies worldwide, including 2 million in the US. It peaked at #2 on the Billboard 200 Album Chart and would remain in the Top 10 for most of 1990, 42 weeks in all. The album was a bigger success in the UK, where it debuted at #1, and was certified 4X platinum. For any album, these stats would be considered a resounding success, but when compared to the juggernaut of Faith in 1987 and 1988, it’s considered a failure. Michael’s refusal to appear in videos, do any interviews or tour in support of the album probably did not help in the way of sales, but the album was critically acclaimed, and in some ways, I think it’s better than Faith. Michael’s contention that SONY, his label at the time, was not supporting him as an artist led him to sue the record company in 1992; the suit was dismissed in 1994. Here’s the article on Wikipedia if you want to dive deeper into the lawsuit. The decision notwithstanding, Michael had made his statement, and as I mentioned above, to me the “Freedom ‘90” video was his way of moving forward as an artist and telling the record company he was doing it his way. They wanted his face; he gave them other pretty faces in the form of supermodels lip-syncing his song. He blew up his past by destroying the icons from Faith and capped it off by walking across the screen and scratching his behind, almost laughing at the system that looked to control his creativity. And this was all before Prince changed his name to a symbol and started to write “Slave” on his face in protest of his contract with Warner Bros. records. George Michael, like Prince, wrote, produced and played several of the instruments on his albums; why shouldn’t he have control over how the music is marketed and how his image is used? But that’s just the opinion of a fan. In 2004, Michael released his last album of original material, Patience, which was critically acclaimed and a #1 album in the UK. Michael has also released two greatest hits collections, Ladies & Gentlemen: The Best of George Michael, in 1998, and Twenty-Five, in 2006. I highly recommend both, especially if you haven’t listened to any of his music before.

When I wrote about Elton John for Track #8, I mentioned the podcast Hit Parade, hosted by Chris Molanphy, and the episode he did about the career parallels of George Michael and Elton John; I’ll call it out again, and recommend you give it a listen. The podcast talks about each artist’s “Imperial Period” on the Billboard charts, and how each man struggled with sexuality, and how coming out affected their careers. It’s amazing storytelling, and you can find the episode on the podcast homepage.

News of George Michael’s death on Christmas Day 2016 was a terrible shock to his fans around the world; my family and I were gathered at the dinner table when we heard. I watched my wife, who normally does not get emotional over such things, shed a tear and wipe it away. She later told me that Listen Without Prejudice is one of the few albums she can sing every word to from beginning to end, and that the album is very special, as it reminds her of early days of high school. We still play that record a lot in our house, and I listen to Faith often for the same reasons; it just reminds me of special times. Both albums are so different in terms of songwriting styles and how they sound that I recommend listening to each one separately, in order. The best part is that no two songs sound the same; George Michael was brilliant that way. But, I did make a George Michael playlist of my 20 favorites, including a couple of Wham! songs, and his duets with Aretha Franklin and Elton John; you can find it on my Spotify page. Speaking of Elton John, I never made a playlist when I did “Captain Fantastic”, so here it is; it seemed an appropriate time given how inextricably George Michael’s career is linked with his. Did I miss any of your favorites? Leave them in the Comments!

See you next time…

JS

11/29/2022