In 1987 a wildfire swept across the pop culture landscape. The blaze raged out of control, consuming all in its path. But which hyper-charismatic artist lit the match that touched off this irresistible inferno? Billy Joel presumptuously used the royal ‘we’ to loudly protest that “we didn’t start the fire”. And well, yeah, I mean, of course not. The arsonist was no hang-dog ivory tickler from Long Island, but a pop music god of fire, descended from Mount Olympus. It was someone much younger, shinier, hairier, and Englisher than Mr. Joel could ever be. The unholy conflagration that scorched the charts and burned itself into our collective consciousness was started by none other than George frickin’ Michael.

“Heaven knows I was just a young boy

didn’t know what I wanted to be”

Born Georgios Kyriacos Panayiotou, Michael shot to international stardom years earlier, partnered with Andrew Ridgeley in teeny-bop good vibes superspreader duo, Wham! But with his debut solo album Faith, George Michael grew into a globe-straddling pop colossus. He became, as Emma Lazarus so presciently put it a century earlier, a “brazen giant of Greek fame, with conquering limbs astride from land to land”. His was an empire upon which the sun never set. With his luscious Mediterranean features and pansexxxual appeal, George Michael put the entire world deep into the bone zone.

If you were alive back then (lucky you!!!), the singles from that album were as inescapable as they were incendiary! George Michael was your father figure! He wanted your sex! He asked the musical question – why can’t you set your monkey free? Everywhere you went, George Michael was there, cooing and seducing. Grocery store, nightclub, hair salon, county fair, county jail, everywhere!

His music video for Faith “destroyed the internet” before the internet existed¹. The concept focused on the three G’s – George, Guitar, Gukebox. We mortals watched, slack-jawed, as Michael shimmied across the screen in his iconic leather jacket, strumming a hollow body Gretsch. Did he really know how to play that guitar? We didn’t know and what’s more, we did not care! His hair (on both head and face) was so perfect, so pure, so right, it defied all logic. And beneath a layer of stonewashed denim, his pert bottom switched back and forth to the beat, commanding our eyeballs to ogle. In the face of such a display, we were left helpless, breathless, and in many cases, pantsless.

“I just hope you understand

sometimes the clothes

do not make the man”

From that moment, the pop charts became a catwalk showcasing his ready-to-wear collection of musical magic. I mean, he kicked the living shit out of his contemporaries for the last half of ‘87, all of 1988, and well into ‘89. Each new single was a shimmering ear worm that George Michael used to penetrate our hungry earholes! The mass emission of pheromones caused by Faith’s inexorable rise resulted in a summer of ferociously wet El Niño storms up and down the Atlantic seaboard! In fact, if you Google ‘inexorable rise’, ‘ferociously wet’, or ‘mass emission of pheromones’, all you get is photo after photo of George Michael.² He was patient zero in the global pandemic known as George Michael Fever. And this is in addition to starting the aforementioned pop cultural wildfire. What I’m trying to say is, he was very very famous.

But so much so fast can be too much too fast. Like many before him, George Michael would learn that fame is a stern dominatrix. The machinery of industrialized entertainment can pin you under its 8 inch stiletto-heeled, thigh-high PVC boot, because the machinery is also the stern dominatrix…like a BDSM robot or something. And you can’t escape the clutches of this kinky robot, not even when you’re a supernova talent. Maybe especially when you’re a supernova talent.

George Michael was undoubtedly mega-talented and mega-scrumptious, but he also showed himself to be mega-observant, mega-sensitive, and mega-thoughtful. From these dizzying heights, the dark side of fame was revealed to him, all spread-eagled on the satin sheets of worldwide stardom. The trappings of this new life were seductive yet grotesque, a sweet caress that could turn into a suffocating choke hold. George Michael saw a grim vision of his future – the sex robot (which we all agree is a great analogy for the music business) would not rest until he was gagged and bound, made to submit and pay handsomely for the pleasure.

But then, George Michael stopped everything by uttering his safe word – Freedom! Actually…Freedom! ‘90.

“Well it looks like the road to heaven

But it feels like the road to hell

When I knew which side my bread was buttered 

I took the knife as well“

Starting from that alphanumeric title, he penned his own entry in the grand tradition of epic pop songs about the price of fame. These songs, usually found on a newly minted megastar’s difficult second album, are cautionary tales that lay bare what Joni Mitchell called “the star maker machinery”. And if you got too close to that machinery while wearing the flowy, loose-fitting garb of megastardom, its gears would grab hold and rip your arm clean off, leaving you disfigured and out of a job. Yes, the star maker machinery had an abysmal track record when it came to workplace safety.

However, the song George Michael wrote was much more than self-indulgent, out of touch, pity-me-for-my-fame-and-riches twaddle. Freedom! ‘90 was an indictment, a parable, an anthem, and a confusing mix of punctuation.³

Chosen as the third single from Michael’s sophomore album, Listen Without Prejudice Vol. 1,  Freedom! ‘90 was a cri de coeur aimed at all of us; the ones who greedily feasted on his delectable essence with no thought to the personal cost. In every verse, chorus, pre-chorus, and bridge he dared to tell the cold, hard truth – that none were without sin. The slinky, mid-tempo production laid a foundation for Michael’s two-pronged proposal. Prong #1 was a call to arms, while prong #2 offered everyone⁴ a shot at redemption. And to reap the benefits of both prongs, all one had to do was:

1. listen without prejudice
2. reflect on how our society takes talented, very good-looking people and sucks them dry before chucking their garishly painted husks into a ditch beside the eight-lane superhighway that we call fame
3. realize that WE have the power to self-realize and that this realization of self-realization can be our salvation!

Freedom! ‘90 was finally unleashed upon the world in October of 1990, less than two months before its title would be outdated.

The song was an elegant vessel of deceptive power. This iron fist in the velvet glove slapped us awake with a simple admixture of Funky Drummer loop, glistening piano, and Michael’s signature hot whisper/pseudo-gospel vocal stylings. And with lyrics that displayed a world-weary maturity, George hit new heights of artistic expression.

“Posing for another picture

Everybody’s got to sell

But when you shake your ass

They notice fast

Some mistakes were built to last“

Up and coming style maven David Fincher was tabbed to direct the accompanying music video, which raised the bar sky high in the eye candy arms race. It would feature a murderer’s row of insanely hot, top dollar supermodel talent – Naomi! Christy! Cindy! Tatjana! Linda! Some dude! – slithering and smouldering their way through an exquisitely lit London manor in various states of undress. There would also be a bucking mechanical bull with a large sheet draped over it.

To better make his point, the artist himself ignored the piggish protestations of money-grubbing record label dorks and defiantly refused to appear in the video. He was done playing to the cameras but would camp out on set to oversee the shoot. Under George Michael’s watchful eye (which was under George Michael’s flawless eyebrow), Fincher simply set the camera to ‘STUN’ and got the hell out of the way.⁵ The result is a moody masterpiece in which the symbols that built Michael’s gilded cage – the leather jacket, the guitar, the jukebox (is that really how it’s spelled?) – are systematically destroyed.

The words and images combined to deliver a message loud and clear. Something about freedom, I think.

This was not a pop song, this was a manifesto. The industry wanted an ass-shaking puppet to keep their money machine rolling? Well, too bad! GEORGE FRICKIN’ MICHAEL was done being the dancing monkey! He would answer the musical question he himself posed one album ago. He would set his monkey free, the monkey being he himself! He declared himself a free monkey/man/icon!

With Freedom! ‘90, George Michael gave us little people more than the gift of great music. He allowed us to peek behind the curtain, confirming what we already suspected – that our grasping corporate overlords don’t care about any of us! Not even those of us who are unnaturally good-looking and can sing good, too! To them, we are all just commodities to be consumed and traded. But over the course of six and a half minutes, our Greco-Anglo champion put those rapacious soul-suckers on notice. We would stand for it no longer!

You know what, just put the song on right now and meet me back here.

I’ll level with you, by the time Freedom! ’90 reaches its crescendo – a full choir in full flight backing a now levitating pop deity – I have given myself over to a higher power. Give me the kool-aid! Audit my thetans! To the battlements, brothers and sisters! Workers of the world unite! This multi-million-dollar man-diva with the immaculately manicured stubble speaks for all of us!

“All we have to do now

Is take these lies and make them true, somehow

All we have to see

Is that I don’t belong to you

And you don’t belong to me, yeah yeah

FREEDOM!“

We never did send Freedom! ‘90 to the top of the charts. It peaked at #8 on the Billboard Hot 100 and that is a stain our society can never wash away.

The album’s title was George Michael’s simple request, and we could not obey it. If we had, Freedom! ‘90 would not only have hit #1 and stayed there for eternity, it would be played at the opening of every Olympic Games or General Assembly of the United Nations. When we make first contact with an alien civilization and they ask what our greatest achievement is, we should just let them hear Freedom! ‘90. Maybe they will listen without prejudice.

1. Hello, pedants! I know you’ll tell me “actually, the internet was created in the 1960s” or some shit but just give us all a break. Seriously, we need a break from you.

2. Again, to any pedants – You don’t have to look up or reply to any of this shit. No one will miss it if you don’t. You’re OK just as you are!

3. The ‘90 was used to distinguish this song from the Wham!’s 1985 hit Freedom. That earlier title didn’t feature an exclamation mark. So really, that would’ve been enough to distinguish the new song from the old. i.e. “Freedom vs Freedom!”. To me, the addition of the ’90 is not strictly necessary and confuses the eye. I mean, yes the song was released in 1990, so it’s not that I don’t get it. Just saying. Anyways, Wham! also had an exclamation mark. I guess George Michael just liked the look of them. In any case, I’ve already spent too much time on this but felt it had to be pointed out. 

4. Except for all those bloodsucking industry pukes, who were beyond saving. Just listen to the goddamn song!

5. After several rewatches, I’m convinced that Fincher had all sorts of juicy, edgy ideas for this video that were vetoed by prudish Columbia execs. Visions of sensuality and psycho-sexual sadism that the director kept locked away for years before pouring them into the making of Se7en. Just imagine the video ending with Christy Turlington, gun in hand and  standing over a smirking male model. She screams “What’s in the fucking box?!?!” as Naomi Campbell tries to keep her from blowing the dude’s face off! I get chills. In the end, George Michael’s loss was Pitt/Freeman/Hollywood’s gain.