George micheal gay
George Michael (courtesy )
Heart failure killed George Michael, 53, on Christmas Wham’s strike “Last Christmas” will never sound the same.
Michael’s songs poeticized queer desire and charted hits. Although many ’80s stars embraced gender-bending and flamboyance, like Prince, David Bowie, Teen George, and even Michael Jackson, Michael pushed further, with lyrics that endure as thinly veiled expressions of homosexual love.
Wham’s breakout second album, Make It Big (), catapulted new Michael and Andrew Ridgeley to worldwide notoriety. From the start, their songs oozed with gay resonances, which haven’t been fully unpacked in most of the articles written in Michael’s wake.
The success of “Careless Whisper” () surprised even Michael himself. As he explained to People, “I don’t know why it made such an impression… But it’s ironic that I wrote it when I was 17 and didn’t know much about anything. Certainly nothing much about relationships.”
Michael wrote the tune to be conspicuously ambiguous about the gender he desired. All the references to “you” and
George Michael said he was 'persuaded' to stay closeted in Wham! even though he 'really wanted to come out'
George Michael is now known as a LGBTQ+ icon, but the British crooner spent much of his career closeted after seeking advice from "the wrong people."
The fresh Netflix documentary "Wham!" uses archival footage to examine the "pivotal moment" that Michael came out to his bandmate, Andrew Ridgeley, when the two friends were
Back in , the pop duo traveled to Ibiza, Spain, to film the music video for "Club Tropicana." In the documentary, Ridgeley recalled how Michael phoned him one morning to "come over and have a chat."
Ridgeley found Michael in bed in his hotel room. Shirlie Holliman, their backup singer and shut friend, was also there.
"He gave Shirlie a sort of quick glance. He said to me, 'Didn't know how to explain you this, but I'm gay. If not male lover, you know, bisexual,'" Ridgeley said. "For me, his sexuality had absolutely no bearing on us. I wanted him to be happy."
Despite his best friend's acceptance, Michael wouldn't appear out publicly for an
I grew up in a family where music always played in everyone’s homes. By the time I was three-years-old, I could sing every lyric to the Beach Boys’ lyric “Barbara Ann” at the request of any person who asked me to. Between my parents’ separate homes, my maternal grandparents’ house, and my paternal grandma’s house, I was inundated by the sounds my guardians preferred. My grandparents, of course, tended to play a lot of old school R&B, soul, Frank Sinatra, and Elvis Presley. My dad was a huge “guido” growing up in the s, so his tastes were mostly confined to disco, later R&B and soul, funk, some blues-rock, and Billy Joel. My mom, on the other hand, was all over the place in terms of her musical tastes. She liked some of the same genres my dad did — especially disco and soul —- but she was also obsessed with the pop-rock of her youth, s new wave, newer pop acts, some electronic Eurobass music that became trendy in the s, and, especially, David Bowie, Elton John, and George Michael.
Before I hit double digits in age, George Michael’s voice significantly populated many a long
When George Michael came out as gay on live TV and inspired a generation
11 October , | Updated: 26 October ,
George Michael appeared on television in revealing he was lgbtq+ for the first time and inspiring the world with the words: "I don’t feel any shame whatsoever."
George Michael had recently been arrested for propositioning an undercover policeman in a Beverley Hills park and, according to the journalist who interviewed him, wanted to bravely reveal the truth "in his own words and in his own way."
Before taking the courageous choice to discuss his sexuality on TV, George said he calmed down by reassuring himself: "You’re a human being. Just move on TV and get it sorted."
Read: George Michael secretly sang to dying "first love" in audience at Freddie Mercury tribute
The landmark interview with CNN starts with Jim Moret stating to George: "Your sexuality has been a focus of tremendous attention."
George responds: "Yeah, to some degree, with pop stars or clip stars, we become the dissent of people’s self-definiti