Sunday Scribblings - "Faith"

Does anybody still like George Michael (formerly of Wham! fame, more latterly of driving-under-the-influence-of-drugs-and-crashing-into-a-shop fame)? He shot straight to the top of my Most Favourite Pop Stars list when I first saw him in the video for “Careless Whisper”, and has remained there pretty much since – as a singer/musician, that is.

I remember me and my cousin both sighing “HOW could she be so hard-hearted as to not forgive him?” when he begs her to “Please stay!” even as she rushes away to her waiting private aircraft – “she” being his girlfriend in the video who caught him cheating on her. (In our defence, it was his beautiful brown eyes, thick blond hair, slightly protruding teeth and the squeaky-clean image he had then, that made our pretensions to feminism vanish in a flurry of besotted heartbeats!)

Of course we were broken hearted when he outed himself as gay, because it meant that we stood no chance of ever capturing his heart – because naturally there would have been every chance of one of us (mainly me, natch) becoming Mrs George Michael if only he’d been straight. (What? I had ambitions, dammit!)

Anyway, over the years I have loved loads of his songs right from the Wham! days. His songs, but never Andrew Ridgeley's, not even in Wham!'s most popular period. I don’t really remember any of Andrew Ridgeley’s songs because he was a wishy-washy singer and also didn’t look as macho as ol’ George – in fact, he looked downright campy and gay. Yes yes, I know, the irony...

So, as I was saying about George Michael, songs like “Faith”, “Father Figure”, “Freedom” and many others (but NOT, EVER EVER EVER and let me say that again EVER EVER EVER EVER, “Last Christmas” - EVER!) are just as good to listen now as when I first heard them.

I’d been wanting to see George Michael live in concert, but that particular ambition was struck off my “wanna do” list after I watched a recording of his most recent concert on Sky (a while back). It was such a disappointment, with George Michael (I can’t seem to refer to him as just “George” or just “Michael” – it’s GOT to be “George Michael”) completely lacklustre and devoid of any kind of enthusiasm. He didn’t look like he wanted to involve the audience in the music or interact with them in any way. Frankly, it was like he was just going through the motions because he had to.

Had I paid good money to watch him sing live and got the sort of performance I saw, I would have been extremely pissed off – and heartbroken too. I guess I don’t have faith any more in him as a performer, although he was – and will always be – a fantastic musician and singer.