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    ‘Wham!’ Documentary Had an Unusual Choice for a Director

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    The director Chris Smith was not a fan of the ’80s pop band when he decided to take on the project about George Michael and Andrew Ridgeley.Two young Londoners — one of Greek Cypriot origin, the other of Egyptian descent — set up a pop band in the 1980s that goes on to sell more than 30 million records. They break up several years later, at the pinnacle of their fame, when the two hit the ripe old age of 23.That, in a nutshell, is the story of Wham!, the British pop duo, and its two stars, George Michael and Andrew Ridgeley. It’s a story that the director Chris Smith tells in a Netflix documentary, which is nominated in Sunday’s EE British Academy Film Awards, known as the BAFTAs.Other contenders in the documentary category include “Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie,” about the actor’s battle with Parkinson’s disease; and “American Symphony,” a year in the life of the musician Jon Batiste.Smith previously directed the Emmy-nominated 2019 documentary “Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened,” about a fraudulent music festival that landed its organizer in jail.Two years earlier, he directed “Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond,” on the making of the 1999 movie “Man on the Moon,” in which Jim Carrey played the entertainer Andy Kaufman.Smith said that he was approached to shoot “Wham!” by its producers. There is no narrator: The tale is told using documentary footage of the duo during their career, paired with audio excerpts from interviews with the two pop stars themselves, which are voiced over — Michael died in 2016 at 53.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Missy Elliott and Willie Nelson Join the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame

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      Innovators from genres that have long been underrepresented in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame were celebrated at the event’s 38th annual induction ceremony in Brooklyn.The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inducted its 38th annual class of musical heroes on Friday at Barclays Center in Brooklyn, in a night dominated by strong women and giants from genres the institution had long treated as adjacent to rock.The latest inductees in the flagship performer category included Willie Nelson, the 90-year-old country icon; Missy Elliott, the hall’s first female rapper; the singer-songwriter Sheryl Crow; George Michael, the larger-than-life pop singer of Wham! who became one of pop’s first openly gay heroes; the soul vocal act the Spinners; Kate Bush, the eclectic British performer, who did not attend; and the political firebrands Rage Against the Machine, who were represented solely by their guitarist, Tom Morello.In other categories, the hall inducted DJ Kool Herc, who presided over hip-hop’s founding party 50 years ago; the rockabilly guitarist Link Wray; the spitfire R&B singer Chaka Khan; Al Kooper, one of rock’s most well-traveled musicians, who played with Bob Dylan, the Rolling Stones and many others; Bernie Taupin, Elton John’s longtime songwriting partner; and Don Cornelius, the creator and host of the TV show “Soul Train.”The induction came less than two months after the Rock Hall ejected Jann Wenner, one of its founders, who made disparaging remarks about female and Black performers as part of a New York Times interview. This year’s class demonstrated the organization’s recent commitment to inclusion, but the night didn’t end without a barbed reference to the controversy.“I’m honored to be in the class of 2023, alongside such a group of profoundly ‘articulate’ women and outstanding, ‘articulate’ Black artists,” said Taupin, echoing Wenner’s comments in the interview.Here are some highlights from the show.Stars from beyond rock’s bordersWillie Nelson, the 90-year-old country star, was honored at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony.Andy Kropa/Invision, via Associated PressSome of the most commanding presences were artists outside the traditional boundaries of rock ’n’ roll who claimed their places in music history proudly.In an arena-worthy spectacle that began with her own countdown clock, Elliott arrived onstage just after midnight outfitted in gold and surrounded by a phalanx of backup dancers. After an energetic spin through abbreviated versions of songs including “Get Ur Freak On,” “The Rain (Supa Dupa Fly)” and “Work It,” she got emotional at the podium, revealing that this was the first time her mother had seen her perform. (Elliott hadn’t wanted to rap risqué records in front of her mom because “she from the church” she said, to laugher.)She mentioned women innovators who “gave me their shoulders to stand on,” including Pepa, Queen Latifah (who inducted her) and Roxanne Shante, and noted that on hip-hop’s 50th anniversary, she felt the magnitude of the moment: “You just feel like it’s so far to reach when you in the hip-hop world, and to be standing here, it means so much to me.”Earlier, Nelson sat stone-faced, in his signature red bandanna and long braids, as Dave Matthews gave a rambling but affectionate induction speech, praising Nelson’s longevity and history of activism — and his well-known penchant for marijuana.Nelson, who has been a member of the Country Music Hall of Fame for 30 years, cut to the chase in a brief acceptance speech, saying, “I never paid much attention to categories, and I’m not sure fans did either.” At 90, Nelson’s love of performing was still palpable. Seated and playing a weathered acoustic guitar, he nimbly ran through riffs and solos, leading his band on classics like “Whiskey River,” “On the Road Again,” and, joined by Crow, “Crazy,” his song made famous by Patsy Cline.Women celebrated womenSheryl Crow, left, was joined by Olivia Rodrigo for a duet of “If It Makes You Happy.”Andy Kropa/Invision, via Associated PressAs recently as 2016, there were years when the hall welcomed no women. But on Friday, they were a strong presence, and honored one another onstage and in supportive statements.The night kicked off with Crow, who began her career as a backup singer for Michael Jackson before breaking out on her own in the 1990s with hits like “All I Wanna Do.” She was joined onstage by Olivia Rodrigo, the 20-year-old pop star, for a duet of “If It Makes You Happy,” a power ballad about vulnerability. And Stevie Nicks of Fleetwood Mac — in black lace and fingerless gloves — sang with Crow on “Strong Enough.”In a video segment, Nicks called Crow “everything that every girl should want to be.” In her acceptance speech, Crow thanked her parents “for all the years of unconditional love,” adding, “and piano lessons.”Khan sang her hits “Ain’t Nobody” and “Sweet Thing” with H.E.R. and “I’m Every Woman” with the pop singer and songwriter Sia, who entered the stage in a gigantic, rainbow-colored wig that obscured her face. In accepting her honor, Khan spent much of her time praising Jazmine Sullivan, the R&B singer who inducted her.Queen Latifah introduced Elliott by noting all the boundaries she’d broken: “Missy has never been afraid to speak out about the preconceptions, the stereotypes, the string of misogyny and the obstacles that have been placed in the way of women.”A night of notable absencesAfter a speech from Ice-T, left, Tom Morello spoke about his group Rage Against the Machine’s mission as a political band.Andy Kropa/Invision, via Associated PressThe ceremony was defined as much by who wasn’t there as who was.Bush, who shot up the charts last year when a decades-old song, “Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God),” was used in the TV show “Stranger Things,” did not attend. Neither did three of the four members of Rage Against the Machine. And some of the most uproarious applause in the arena was for Michael, who died in 2016.Bush, who has not performed in public in nine years, was celebrated for her singularly dark and theatrical vision. The singer St. Vincent, her wide eyes staring straight ahead, performed “Running Up That Hill” in a black puffy lace top. In a statement posted to her website on Friday, Bush thanked the Rock Hall for welcoming her to “the most extraordinary rostrum of overwhelming talent.”Michael was inducted by Andrew Ridgeley, his childhood friend and partner in Wham!, who appeared in a crisp purple three-piece suit. He spoke of Michael’s intense drive for fame as well as his talents in the studio as a writer and producer and added, “His beauty gave balm and succor to the listener.”Though Rage Against the Machine didn’t perform, Morello gave a fiery speech following Ice-T’s induction that endorsed music’s power to spark progress. “Can music change the world?” he said, peppering his remarks with profanities. “The entire [expletive] aim is to change the world,” he proclaimed.Smaller names who made a big impactElton John, left, embracing his longtime songwriting partner, Bernie Taupin, who was inducted into the Rock Hall on Friday.Eduardo Munoz/ReutersSome of the most poignant moments came in celebrations of people who were never household-name stars. These fulfilled one of the Rock Hall’s key missions of contextualizing pop music history and shining lights on figures whose influence was greater than their fame.The Spinners began as a doo-wop group in Michigan in the 1950s, then spent years without fame at Motown before signing to Atlantic Records and making a string of hits that defined Philadelphia soul. DJ Kool Herc, who took the stage with a cane, was honored as a father of hip-hop and gave a tearful speech thanking various people from throughout his life, including artists like James Brown and Harry Belafonte.In a video inducting Link Wray, the rockabilly guitarist whose snarling 1958 instrumental “Rumble” became a controversial hit — it was banned in some cities, out of fear it would incite violence — Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin called Wray “my hero,” saying the song taught him “the drama you could set up with six strings.” He then appeared on the Barclays stage, leading a performance of “Rumble” with a three-piece rockabilly combo.John told of how his 56-year songwriting partnership with Taupin started randomly, when a record company paired them together, and spoke passionately about the underappreciated role of lyricists. Then, at the piano, John gave a stirring performance of “Tiny Dancer,” one of their most enduring collaborations.Taupin summed up his speech with an appeal to accept the all-inclusive borders of pop music.“It means no walls, no inherent snobbery,” he said. “It means we’re all in this together.”Caryn Ganz and Emmanuel Morgan contributed reporting. More

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      An Exclamatory Playlist!

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      Wham! Neu! “Oh! Darling” and more artists and songs that make a statement.George Michael and Andrew Ridgeley in “Wham!”NetflixDear listeners,If you’re looking for something light, fun and full of ridiculous ’80s fashion, I can’t recommend the new Netflix documentary about the pop group Wham! enough — it’s basically the documentary equivalent of a beach read.As someone who wasn’t around for Wham!’s heyday, the movie allowed me to live vicariously through its rise and appreciate things about Wham! I’d never considered before. Like how confident a producer and songwriter George Michael was from a young age. And also that Michael and his immaculately coifed bandmate Andrew Ridgeley really knew how and when to break up a band. They announced their imminent demise in 1986, and then played one epic final show at Wembley Stadium. “Wham! was never going to be middle-aged,” Ridgeley says in the movie, “or be anything other than an essential and pure representation of us as youths.”That sentiment made me realize how uncommonly perfect a band name Wham! was for this group. Goofy, youthful, monosyllabic, here-for-a-good-time-but-not-a-long-time and above all things — exclamatory! Adults, “serious musicians,” newspaper style guidelines: All of them tell you that exclamation points should be used sparingly. Wham! was having none of that. The duo said, “We’re going to make you write or speak an exclamation mark every time you use our name.”It got me thinking about the art of using exclamation marks in band names and song titles. Which, of course, calls for a playlist.Sometimes the musical exclamation point almost mimics percussion: “Turn! Turn! Turn!” or “Gimme! Gimme! Gimme!” Sometimes it helps you hear the voice of a particularly emotive singer, as I can only hear the phrase “Everybody Wants Some!!” in David Lee Roth’s wail. But more often than not, the musical exclamation point is simply a way to raise the stakes, to indicate (at the risk of overcompensating) that there is something ecstatic about the sound that accompanies it.Like Wham!, I’ll now make my graceful exit. All that’s left to say: Listen up!Listen along on Spotify as you read.1. Wham!: “Everything She Wants”This is one of my favorite Wham! songs, perhaps because it sounds, uncharacteristically, a little sinister. As my colleague Wesley Morris put it in his great review of “Wham!,” “there is a kind of desperation in the average Wham! song, a crisis about either being trapped in lovelessness or excluded from love — a crisis audible, even to my young ears, as a wail from the closet.” (Listen on YouTube)2. Abba: “Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight)”Famously sampled in Madonna’s 2005 dance-floor reinvention “Hung Up,” this lusty 1979 Abba classic also boasts some excellent parentheses use. (Listen on YouTube)3. Van Halen: “Everybody Wants Some!!”A double exclamation point? That’s bold. Then again, Eddie Van Halen’s solo in the middle of this 1980 track is, like any Eddie Van Halen solo, basically the sonic equivalent of a double exclamation mark. When Richard Linklater paid homage to this song by naming his (hilarious) 2016 movie “Everybody Wants Some!!,” he knew enough to honor the band’s punctuation. (Listen on YouTube)4. The Beatles: “Oh! Darling”The Beatles certainly knew how to employ the exclamation point: “Help!,” “Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!,” and, if you expand the framework to their solo careers, John Lennon’s “Instant Karma!” I love the first-syllable exclamation in “Oh! Darling,” though: Its clipped agony contrasts with the way Paul McCartney stretches out that “daaaarling” and effectively captures the raw-throated desperation of his vocal. (Listen on YouTube)5. The Byrds: “Turn! Turn! Turn! (To Everything There Is a Season)”I confess that this song — and the Byrds’ lush, fluid delivery of that titular phrase — never really screamed “exclamation” to me. But given that it was written by Pete Seeger and known as a quiet folk ballad before the Byrds made it a No. 1 hit in 1965, those three typographical lightning strikes, though present in Seeger’s original title, now convey the excitement of “Turn! Turn! Turn!” gone electric. (Listen on YouTube)6. Sly and the Family Stone: “Stand!”Also the name of Sly and the Family Stone’s great 1969 album, “Stand!” is a command, an invitation and a call to action, bringing the listener right into the reality of the song. Its punctuation also effectively communicates the energy of the track’s ever-ascending chorus and frenzied, gospel-influenced final section. (Listen on YouTube)7. Los Campesinos!: “You! Me! Dancing!”There was a coy, sometimes run-on exuberance about many indie bands in the aughts, though few encapsulated that as expressively as the Welsh group Los Campesinos! Bonus points, of course, for exclamation points in the band name and song title! (Listen on YouTube)8. Neu!: “Hero”The name of the legendary krautrock group Neu! — German for “New!” — was, in a sense, a sendup of the consumer culture pervading the band’s Düsseldorf home in the early 1970s. As the wildly influential drummer Klaus Dinger said in a 2001 interview with The Wire, “‘Neu!’ at that time was the strongest word in advertising.” (Listen on YouTube)9. George Michael: “Freedom! (‘90)”In 1984, Wham! released a bright, buoyant single called “Freedom.” Michael chose to revisit that title — though now with a time-stamp, and an exclamation! — for this hit from his second solo album, “Listen Without Prejudice Vol. 1.” The lyrics revisit the image he cultivated back in those Wham! days, and reject it in favor of something truer to Michael’s authentic self: “Today the way I play the game is not the same, no way,” he sang. “Think I’m gonna get myself happy.” The exclamation mark sells it: This song was Michael’s liberation. (Listen on YouTube)Gotta have some faith in the sound,LindsayThe Amplifier PlaylistListen on Spotify. We update this playlist with each new newsletter.“An Exclamatory Playlist!” track listTrack 1: Wham!, “Everything She Wants”Track 2: Abba, “Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight)”Track 3: Van Halen, “Everybody Wants Some!!”Track 4: The Beatles, “Oh! Darling”Track 5: The Byrds, “Turn! Turn! Turn! (To Everything There Is a Season)”Track 6: Sly and the Family Stone, “Stand!”Track 7: Los Campesinos!, “You! Me! Dancing!”Track 8: Neu!, “Hero”Track 9: George Michael, “Freedom! (’90)”Bonus tracksRIP Tony Bennett, who was such a musical institution that part of me thought he might actually live forever. Rob Tanenbaum put together a playlist of 10 of his best-known songs, and Jon Pareles wrote a lovely appraisal that begins with quite a musical brainteaser: “Has there ever been a more purely likable pop figure than Tony Bennett?” I’m still mulling it over. More

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      Andrew Ridgeley on George Michael and Life After Wham!

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      “The only thing I ever wanted to do from the age of 14 was to be in a band,” but he is content with the duo’s short career, which is chronicled in a new documentary.If you weren’t a teenager in 1984, it might be hard to understand this, but here goes: There are Gen X-ers who remember where they were the first time they saw the video for the Wham! clap-along pop anthem “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go.”In it, George Michael and Andrew Ridgeley, the heartthrob frontmen of Wham!, wear big smiles and beachy short shorts as they perform their infectious bop — titled after a note Ridgeley had once left on his family’s refrigerator — for a small crowd of adoring fans. There were fingerless gloves, neon face paint, white “Choose Life” T-shirts that had nothing to do with abortion: It was a new-wave dance party for cool kids who thought Mötley Crüe sucked.Ridgeley, who turned 60 in January, remembers making it as great fun.“It was our first video with an audience,” he said during a recent video interview from his home in London. “The atmosphere was really quite excitable and exciting.”Ridgeley and his bandmate are the subject of “Wham!,” a new documentary that premieres on Wednesday on Netflix. Directed by Chris Smith, it charts the British group’s climb to pop stardom, beginning with its ferocious appearance on the music show “Top of the Pops” in 1982, through the global success that followed the albums “Fantastic” (1983) and “Make It Big” (1984), and finishing with the 1986 farewell concert in London.The film, which is itself directed like a power-pop video, explains how the duo’s modern mix of disco, funk, pop and soul, in songs like “Young Guns (Go for It),” “Careless Whisper” and “Freedom,” helped make Wham! one of the biggest pop groups of the late 20th century, even though it lasted just four years. Unlike bands that split over artistic or personal disagreements, Wham! didn’t have a rise and fall. “It was just a rise and they called it a day,” Smith said.They didn’t break up either, said Ridgeley, but rather “brought Wham! to a close in a manner of our own choosing.”Michael and Ridgeley at the height of their early popularity.NetflixFans might be disappointed to learn that in the documentary Ridgeley is heard but not seen as he appears today: debonair and patrician, with silver hair and a still-cheeky smile. Smith said it would have thrown the film’s mythic aspirations off balance if Ridgeley were on camera but not Michael, who died seven years ago at 53.After Wham!, Ridgeley told me, he and Michael were “no longer living in each other’s pockets” as they had done since they were kids. But their bond was fixed.If Ridgeley is tired of being known mostly for his friendship with Michael, he didn’t show it. He brightened when chatting about Michael, whose loss left Ridgeley feeling “like the sky had fallen in,” as he said in 2017. But he didn’t seem into talking much about his life now, other than to say he enjoyed cycling.The documentary includes archival media coverage and tons of concert footage, including scenes of groundbreaking shows in 1985, when Wham! became the first Western pop group to perform in China.But it’s Ridgeley’s mother who supplied the most personal treasures. Since her son’s grade-school days making music with Michael, she kept about 50 meticulously organized scrapbooks stuffed with photos, reviews and other ephemera. They include snapshots from the mid-1970s when Ridgeley first got to know Michael as Georgios Kyriacos Panayiotou, the son of a Cypriot father and a British mother.Ridgeley was also the son of an immigrant father — his dad was Egyptian — and a British mother, and he hit it off immediately with the boy he called Yog, a nickname he used often in our interview. The scrapbooks paint a vivid portrait of boys who loved Queen and “Saturday Night Fever” and desired to make music a career.“The only thing I ever wanted to do from the age of 14 was to be in a band, write songs and perform,” Ridgeley said with a 14-year-old’s enthusiasm in his voice, adding that fame and celebrity “were never a motivating factor for either of us.”Ridgeley said he and Michael knew Wham! would have a finite life span because Michael’s songwriting began “developing and evolving in a way and at a speed” that Wham! couldn’t accommodate. In November, Michael will be inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.Since Wham!’s heyday, Ridgeley has battled the perception that he’s famous only because he was in a duo with a more talented artist. The documentary makes a case in his favor though, tracing how Ridgeley, a guitarist, collaborated with the composer and performer Michael.Still, Ridgeley acknowledged that his musicianship wasn’t in the same league as Michael’s, “one of the finest, if not the finest, singing voices of his generation,” he said, sounding like a proud brother.Ridgeley said his bond with Michael endured even after Wham! ended.NetflixWhen Michael came out to him after they filmed the video for “Club Tropicana” (1983), 15 years before he did so publicly, Ridgeley said he supported him with love and a shrug. Michael was more freaked out by how his father might react than how the public would, Ridgeley said; had Michael come out during the Wham! years, Ridgeley said he and fans would have had his back.“I didn’t think it was going to affect our success, and in the long term it probably wouldn’t,” he said. “It would have been difficult for a while for him, there’s no doubt about that. It would have required management by us all. But after the initial sensationalism, it’s on the table isn’t it?”After Wham!, Ridgeley released a 1990 solo album that flatlined and he did a short stint as a Formula 3 driver, but he has otherwise stayed out of the limelight. The British tabloids have kept breathless tabs on his love life — including his 25-year relationship with Keren Woodward, a former member of another ’80s pop group, Bananarama — much as they did when they gave him the Wham!-era nickname Randy Andy.Ridgeley didn’t pursue fame further because being in Wham! gave him “everything he wanted,” said Shirlie Kemp, a friend from school and a Wham! backup singer. Not just professionally.“I don’t think I ever met anyone else who was on par with George the way Andrew was, intellectually and with a sense of humor,” said Kemp, whose husband is Martin Kemp of the ’80s band Spandau Ballet. “It was the best relationship I’d ever seen George have with anyone.”Ridgeley said “few stones remain unturned” as he’s worked the past five years on projects that are all-things-Wham! In 2019, he published a memoir, “Wham! George Michael & Me,” and had a cameo that year in the romantic-comedy “Last Christmas,” which was inspired by the group’s eponymous chart-topping holiday single. Later this month comes “Echoes From the Edge of Heaven,” a Wham! singles collection.He still seems to be in awe of what he and his best friend made together.“I could never quite really get that we had achieved the same kind of success as the artists that we revered like gods when we were growing up,” he said. “We were playing Wembley Stadium, the same place Elton John played. You can say, ‘I am the same.’ But in your own mind, you’re never the same.” More

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      ‘Wham!’ Review: They Made It Big, Then Broke Up

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      A new movie documents George Michael and Andrew Ridgeley’s storming of the pop airwaves as the duo Wham! and laughs past the thorny questions.The new documentary about George Michael, Andrew Ridgeley and the music they made as Wham! — it’s just called “Wham!” — found me in a moment of need for a nostalgic, fantastical elixir, something short, sweet and tangential to my feeling of national blues. For one thing, Wham!, the duo, made soul music that popped. And the movie dances past all of the thorny moral and ethical questions of white people making Black stuff. Those questions don’t exist at all in this movie. That’s the fantasy. And I’m here for it. But also: Wham! didn’t have any thorns.Here were two white boys from England of solid Greek Cypriot (George) and Egyptian (Andrew) stock, born during Motown’s ascent in the early 1960s and, in adolescence, bonded to each other as disco was handing the party baton to new wave and rap. They synthesized it all (plus a little Barry Manilow and Freddie Mercury, and some Billy Joel) into a genre whose only other alchemists, really, were Hall and Oates. In every one of the duo’s roughly two dozen songs — including “Everything She Wants,” “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go,” “I’m Your Man,” jams all — there’s influence but, in the movie’s conjuring, no anxiety. Race doesn’t quite exist here.The film doesn’t bother with journalism or criticism or music history. Just a lot of pictures and archival interviews, performance footage, outtakes and music videos. It’s essentially adapted, by the director Chris Smith and some very busy editors, from scrapbooks that Ridgeley’s mother kept, celebrating everything from the duo’s first attempt to storm the airwaves in 1981 to its acrimony-free breakup in 1986. That’s where things end, a year before the release of Michael’s megahit album “Faith,” and decades before his death in 2016 at 53. There’s no mention made, either, of Ridgeley’s misapprehended, out-of-print solo album from 1990, “Son of Albert.”There aren’t even any talking heads. The disembodied voices of Michael and Ridgeley guide the whole thing — rumination and memory as narration. (Most of Michael’s comes from a BBC Radio interview.) They explain how they met as schoolkids in the mid-1970s and took over a mini-block of 1980s culture. You get to hear Ridgeley still warmly call Michael by his nickname, Yog, for he was born Georgios Kyriacos Panayiotou, and see both their looks pinball from leather bar to Richard Simmons.Nothing here’s overthought or pumped up. To invoke the words of a different beacon of catchiness, “Wham!” is a teenage dream. You could drink it from a coconut. You’re permitted to embrace Michael’s dexterous approach to Black music and Ridgeley’s affable interpretation of Michael’s blueprint as the way — a way — things could be. Easy, frictionless. You hear Michael rhyme on “Wham! Rap” just about as bodaciously as Grandmaster Flash or with some of Kurtis Blow’s humor, and no cold sweats follow. The homework had clearly been done. So, instead you say: He just … had It.I mean, the early 1980s were awash in young white Brits making hits, at least partially, out of slicked-up Motown: ABC, Bananarama, Duran Duran, Eurythmics, Soft Cell. I’d say that sound came most naturally to Michael; it seemed most elastic to him. He really could make the most of a “do do do” or a “yeah yeah.” He had a knack for tattoo melodies and chord progressions so juicy that you want to bite into every section of almost every song.Michael learned early on how to shade his singing. He could get it to coo and wail and susurrate; Ridgeley, played a feisty, insinuating, shirt-unbuttoning guitar, an element I can now hear (and thanks to this film, appreciate). They made three albums in as many years, then stopped when the costs of fame became too much for Ridgeley but were barely meeting Michael’s expectations for himself. Wham!, for Michael, was the ground floor. To hear both men tell it, he was the stronger songwriter, and he really knew how to produce a record.My favorite story in the documentary involves a trip to Memphis that Michael took to record “Careless Whisper” with the legendary Muscle Shoals rhythm section under the supervision of the producer Jerry Wexler, another legend. Michael didn’t like what they did with the song. The movie lets you hear some of it, and the trademark warmth is what seems to be missing. There’s something almost metronomic about it. (If there were a moment for somebody to come in and do some explaining, this would be it. What exactly displeased George and eventually Andrew?) But I love this story because it stars these different generations of white soul musicians with divergent tastes in Black music. Maybe Wexler and the boys didn’t hear “Careless Whisper” the way Michael did. But he had the confidence (and the nerve) to take it home and redo it until it became the screen of silk and smoke we know today.“I’m never gonna dance again, the way I danced with you”? What a work of melodrama! Where’d it come from? Who did Michael do wrong? “Wham!” alludes to personal struggles — Michael with his sexuality; Ridgeley with partying. Michael recounts coming out to Ridgeley early on but to almost no one else. Success becomes his identity. In the film, that identity’s lowest moment happens at the end of 1984, when “Last Christmas,” on its way to being Wham!’s fourth U.K. chart-topper in the calendar year, is kept from the spot by “Do They Know It’s Christmas?,” the all-star charity-for-Africa record, which Wham! is on. Michael is bummed that he keeps himself stuck at No. 2.Michael chose to let ambition define him. But there is a kind of desperation in the average Wham! song, a crisis about either being trapped in lovelessness or excluded from love — a crisis audible, even to my young ears, as a wail from the closet. (The bouncy, blow-dried music videos were always a different story: What closet?) Meanwhile, the movie about the men who made these songs is all bright side. A little desp rarely sounded so good. A pair of more candid, if more conventional, documentaries exist about the darkness and light of Michael’s life. This one? It’s a prequel, one that personifies the Wham! Experience: over before you know it.Wham!Not rated. Running time: 1 hour 32 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More

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      Did the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame (Gasp) Get It Right?

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      Hear songs from the class of 2023’s seven inductees, including Sheryl Crow, Missy Elliott and Willie Nelson.Perhaps making the Rock Hall made Sheryl Crow happy (which can’t be that bad).Rebecca Smeyne for The New York TimesDear listeners,I don’t have much reverence for the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame — a shadowy and arbitrary institution founded by record executives and music industry influencers who have historically hewed to a pretty narrow definition of rock ’n’ roll. However, this year’s inductees, which were announced earlier this week, represent one of the strongest classes in recent memory.This calls for a playlist.The group of seven artists who will join the institution in November contains both overdue legends (Willie Nelson, the Spinners) and iconoclastic innovators (Kate Bush, Rage Against the Machine). It’s a bit more diverse than the normal Rock Hall class, which isn’t saying much: According to the writer Evelyn McDonnell, who has long been covering the Hall’s glaring biases, women make up just 8.63 percent of its inductees. The great Missy Elliott will make history this year as not just the first female rapper to make it in, but also the first Black female artist inducted in her first year of eligibility. Such achievements are worth celebrating — as Elliott did, in an exuberant series of tweets — but we should also bemoan the fact that they took so long to happen in the first place.In sequencing today’s selections, I found some common threads: the way Bush and Elliott share an imaginative and ambitiously artful approach to composition; the way George Michael updates the intricate soulfulness of a group like the Spinners for the more self-aware ’90s; a certain sneer in Sheryl Crow’s delivery that, when it hits in a certain way, echoes the grit of Rage’s Zack De La Rocha.Purists can debate whether or not any of these artists can be classified as “rock,” but I prefer the more exciting definition Ice Cube put forth in his speech when he was inducted with the rap group N.W.A in 2016. “Rock ’n’ roll is not an instrument; rock ’n’ roll is not even a style of music,” he said. “Rock ’n’ roll is a spirit. Rock ’n’ roll is not conforming to the people who came before you, but creating your own path in music and in life.”Listen along on Spotify as you read.1. Kate Bush: “The Big Sky”This year marked the fourth time Bush has been nominated for the Rock Hall, but it’s likely that the recent, “Stranger Things”-inspired resurgence in the popularity of “Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God)” finally pushed her over the edge. You’ve probably heard that song plenty in the past year, so how about a less ubiquitous — but just as great — track from that same 1985 album, “Hounds of Love”? The 1-2-3-punch of “Running Up That Hill,” the title track and this one, “The Big Sky,” just might be one of the most visionary opening stretches of any pop album. (Listen on YouTube)2. Missy Elliott, “Work It”Sometimes the obvious choice is the correct choice. The hallucinatory “Work It” isn’t exactly an obscure B-side in Missy’s discography, but it’s one of the most obvious examples of her brash, otherworldly genius as both an M.C. and a producer, and of the gloriously outré sounds she was able to smuggle into the mainstream. Who else could run a chorus backward and still make its nonsense syllables sound so infectious? (Listen on YouTube)3. Rage Against the Machine, “Bulls on Parade”Does this mean the RATM superfan Guy Fieri is a Rock Hall voter? I kid. Rage is probably the most traditionally rock-leaning artist among this year’s inductees — which is certainly saying something, since “traditional” isn’t a word I’d normally use to describe this band’s politics or sound, its most recognizable hits (like the pummeling “Bulls on Parade”) included. (Listen on YouTube)4. Sheryl Crow, “Leaving Las Vegas”It feels weird to call any of the singles on Crow’s huge debut album “Tuesday Night Music Club” underrated, but … I think this one actually is? Sure, “All I Wanna Do” has been overplayed to oblivion, and “Strong Enough” has proved an important touchstone for a younger generation of female musicians like Haim and boygenius — but “Leaving Las Vegas” has bars. Her delivery of the line “There’s such a muddy line between the things you want and the things you have to do” (!) kills me every single time. (Listen on YouTube)5. The Spinners, “Could It Be I’m Falling in Love”The air is a little bit lighter in a Spinners song than it is back down here on Earth. Bobby Smith’s lead vocal seems to float just a few inches above the rest of the track, leaving no doubt about the answer to the question he poses in this timeless 1972 hit, by a group neglected by the Motown machine that rose to prominence anyway in its own time. (Listen on YouTube)6. George Michael, “Freedom! ’90”Some days, this is my answer to that impossible question, “What’s the best pop song of all time?” But any day of the week I’d tell you it’s the best song ever written about being a pop star — that strange contract between performer and fan that Michael knowingly interrogates from inside the machine and finally sets ablaze in a liberatory chorus. He more than deserves a place in the Rock Hall; I just wish he could have lived to attend his induction. (Listen on YouTube)7. Willie Nelson, “Tower of Song”Earlier this year, the newly 90-year-old Nelson beat out a bunch of young whippersnappers like Maren Morris, Miranda Lambert and Luke Combs to win the best country album Grammy for “A Beautiful Time.” It’s a lovely record with some strong original material, but the track I keep returning to is his lived-in rendition of Leonard Cohen’s wryly majestic “Tower of Song.” If this cover passed you by when the album first came out, well, you’re in for quite a treat. (Listen on YouTube)Pause for the chant,LindsayThe Amplifier PlaylistListen on Spotify. We update this playlist with each new newsletter.“Did the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame (Gasp) Get It Right?” track listTrack 1: Kate Bush, “The Big Sky”Track 2: Missy Elliott, “Work It”Track 3: Rage Against the Machine, “Bulls on Parade”Track 4: Sheryl Crow, “Leaving Las Vegas”Track 5: The Spinners, “Could It Be I’m Falling in Love”Track 6: George Michael, “Freedom! ’90”Track 7: Willie Nelson, “Tower of Song”Bonus tracksJoe Kwaczala and Kristen Studard host the highly entertaining podcast “Who Cares About the Rock Hall?,” which strikes a balance between appropriately irreverent skepticism (both are professional comedians) and Kwaczala’s encyclopedic knowledge of Rock Hall history. Every year, they do an in-depth episode about each of the nominees; I found out about the show when they kindly asked me to talk Dolly Parton with them last season. Their episode about this year’s class of inductees was especially great, if full of playful jabs at my queen Crow (I forgive, but will take this opportunity to link to one more Sheryl banger).And, as always, check out our weekly Playlist for the latest songs worth your time. Today we’ve got fresh tracks from the post-punk legends Bush Tetras, the D.J.-turned-electro-pop-singer-songwriter Avalon Emerson and more. Listen here. More

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      Rock & Roll Hall of Fame 2023: Kate Bush, Missy Elliott, Willie Nelson

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      Rounding out the far-from-traditional class of 2023: George Michael, Sheryl Crow, Rage Against the Machine and the Spinners.The reclusive (but freshly relevant) experimental pop singer Kate Bush, the one-of-one rapper Missy Elliott and the 90-year-old country stalwart Willie Nelson are among this year’s genre-spanning inductees to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. The organization behind the museum and annual ceremony announced the lineup on Wednesday, underlining how the new class reflected “the diverse artists and sounds that define rock & roll.”Rounding out the seven acts voted in by more than 1,000 artists, historians and music industry professionals are the pop singer George Michael, who died in 2016; the 1970s soul group the Spinners, who had been nominated three times prior; the platinum-selling 1990s pop-rock singer Sheryl Crow; and the politically rambunctious rap-rock band Rage Against the Machine, who crossed the threshold after its fifth time on the ballot.The Rock Hall ceremony will be held on Friday, Nov. 3, at Barclays Center in Brooklyn.Furthering a pattern that has taken shape in recent years — following steady criticism against the Rock Hall for its lack of inclusion, especially among race and gender lines — none of the musicians inducted this time fit neatly into the most narrow strictures of what constitutes rock. But as the genre and the institution continue to evolve, those behind the scenes have proved increasingly welcome to honoring rappers, pop singers and country artists like Dolly Parton, who attempted to remove herself from consideration last year but was voted in anyway.In a statement accompanying the induction announcement on Wednesday, John Sykes, the chairman of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Foundation, said, “We are honored that this November’s induction ceremony in New York will coincide with two milestones in music culture; the 90th birthday of Willie Nelson and the 50th anniversary of the birth of hip-hop.”Nelson — who celebrated his birthday over the weekend with a concert featuring Neil Young, Miranda Lambert and Snoop Dogg — had been eligible for the Rock Hall since 1987, 25 years after the release of his first commercial recording and six years before he was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame. Like Michael, best known for hits like “Faith” and “Freedom! ’90,” this was Nelson’s first time on the ballot.Bush, who has not released an album in more than a decade, had been nominated three times prior. But she may have received a boost thanks to renewed interest in her music since last year, when a placement in the Netflix show “Stranger Things” sent her 1985 single “Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God)” back onto pop radio and to a new peak of No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100.Elliott will become the first woman in rap to be included in the Rock Hall, following previous recognition for artists like Run-DMC, Beastie Boys, N.W.A, Public Enemy and Jay-Z. “I want to say this is HUGE not for just me but all my Sisters in HIPHOP,” she wrote in a string of tweets on Wednesday. “this door is now OPEN to showcase the hard work & what many of us contribute to MUSIC. I have cried all morning because I am GRATEFUL.”Voters passed over more traditional rock bands on the latest ballot like Soundgarden, the White Stripes, Iron Maiden and Joy Division, as well as the singer-songwriters Warren Zevon and Cyndi Lauper. The rap group A Tribe Called Quest also failed to make the cut.Yet outside of those inducted as performers, the ceremony this fall will also celebrate the hip-hop pioneer DJ Kool Herc and the guitarist Link Wray (awarded for “musical influence”); the singer Chaka Khan, the composer and producer Al Kooper and the songwriter Bernie Taupin (for “musical excellence”); and the “Soul Train” creator, producer and host Don Cornelius (posthumously receiving the Ahmet Ertegun award for executives). More

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      Rock & Roll Hall of Fame: Willie Nelson, Missy Elliott and Sheryl Crow Nominated

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      Cyndi Lauper, Joy Division, George Michael and the White Stripes are also among the first-time nominees up for induction this year.Willie Nelson, Missy Elliott, Sheryl Crow, the White Stripes and Cyndi Lauper are among the first-time nominees for the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame this year, the organization behind the museum and annual ceremony announced on Wednesday.Artists become qualified for induction 25 years after the release of their first commercial recording; both Elliott, the trailblazing rapper, and the White Stripes, the defunct garage-rock duo, made the ballot in their first year of eligibility. (Because of changes in when the nominating committee meets, the Rock Hall said releases from 1997 and 1998 were eligible this year for the first time.)Nelson, who turns 90 in April, became eligible in 1987, and was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1993. Last year, Dolly Parton at first protested her nomination, saying that she didn’t “feel that I have earned that right” as a country musician. (Voters disagreed, and she joined the Hall in November.) Crow, whose career began in the 1990s, has been eligible for several years, while Lauper, the singer behind hits like “Girls Just Want to Have Fun,” could have been nominated more than a decade ago.Among the 14 nominees this year, other first-time picks include: George Michael, the English singer-songwriter who died in 2016; Joy Division, the English rock band that became New Order in 1980 after the death of the group’s frontman, Ian Curtis; and Warren Zevon, the singer-songwriter whose work was beloved by performers like Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen and who died in 2003.More than 1,000 artists, historians and music industry professionals will now vote on the nominees to choose the final class of inductees, which typically include between five and seven musicians or groups that have increasingly over recent years spanned a wider mix of genres: rap, country, folk, pop and more.Will 2023 be the year for musicians who have been nominated repeatedly, to no avail? The politically minded group Rage Against the Machine is on the ballot for the fifth time. Kate Bush, whose song “Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God)” was resurgent on the charts last year after an appearance in the TV show “Stranger Things,” has been nominated three times before, as have the Spinners, one of the leading soul groups of the 1970s.The hip-hop group A Tribe Called Quest, the heavy metal band Iron Maiden and Soundgarden, a rock band that was ascendant in the ’90s and lost its singer Chris Cornell in 2017, have all been nominated once before.While an unnamed nominating committee within the Hall of Fame is in charge of choosing the slate of possible inductees, power now flips to the voters, and fans are also asked to weigh in online. (A single “fan ballot” is submitted as a result of those votes.)The inductees will be announced in May, and the ceremony is slated to take place in the fall. More

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      George Michael Preferred Music to Fame. The Doc He Made Does, Too.

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      “George Michael: Freedom Uncut,” a film the musician worked on with his longtime collaborator David Austin, tells the story of his professional life via interviews and previously unseen footage.George Michael and David Austin were best friends who met because their mothers were best friends. Austin’s family lived at 67 Redhill Drive in the working class East Finchley area of North London, and Michael’s family was at 57. The two wrote songs together and remained close even as one became a global superstar and the other didn’t.Michael was a gifted and determined musical dynamo who became a star at the age of 19, first as a member of the British duo Wham! He won two Grammys in the solo career that followed, and collaborated with some of the greatest stars of the previous generation, including Aretha Franklin, Stevie Wonder, Paul McCartney and Elton John. He was a gifted writer, producer, arranger and musician, sometimes playing all the instruments on his songs. And as a singer, he moved fluidly from Motown pop to hard funk to Brazilian bossa nova, with a voice that was sure, expressive and flush with poignancy and drama.Neither Michael nor Austin had significant movie directing experience, but neither lacked confidence, so around 2014 they began directing a documentary detailing the vicissitudes of Michael’s career and life, including pop supremacy and international scandal, euphoric love and lacerating deaths.In December 2016, they’d picture-locked the film and planned a screening for their families, who’d gathered, as they often did, to celebrate Christmas together. “We were going to show it to our parents on Boxing Day,” Austin said. “George was immensely proud of it.” But Michael died in his sleep at 53 and was found by a lover, Fadi Fawaz, on Christmas morning. The cause was a heart condition.Austin trimmed Michael’s final cut to fit a TV time slot on Channel Four in England, where it aired in October 2017 as “George Michael: Freedom.” But he was dissatisfied with the edit because it didn’t tell the full story as Michael saw it. So in the following years, while resolving some worldwide rights issues, Austin restored the final cut and added an introduction by Kate Moss and tribute performances by Adele as well as Chris Martin of Coldplay. The film, now called “George Michael: Freedom Uncut,” debuts in theaters worldwide on Wednesday.“Freedom Uncut” was preceded in 2004 by the BBC’s “A Different Story,” which included interviews with Michael’s close friends as well as his father, a Greek immigrant who’d viewed his son’s dreams of stardom as juvenile and foolhardy. Throughout “A Different Story,” Michael discusses his private life with self-mocking candor, which was one of his most charming traits: “Oh my God, I’m a massive star and I think I may be a poof,” he says at one point, describing a time when he began coming to grips with being gay. “What am I going to do?”So for “Freedom Uncut,” Michael wanted to focus on his professional life. “He said, ‘This is a different film. This is about me and about the people I work with,’” Austin recalled in a phone call from his office in London. The documentary includes interviews with fellow music stars, including Elton John, Stevie Wonder and Mary J. Blige, the comedians Ricky Gervais and James Corden, the producer Mark Ronson and the supermodels Naomi Campbell, Linda Evangelista, and others who starred in his “Freedom! ’90” video. The film includes recently discovered 35 mm footage shot by the director David Fincher, who directed “Freedom! ’90” before his successful career in Hollywood, and unseen home videos Michael made of Anselmo Feleppa, his longtime boyfriend, who died in March 1993 of an AIDS-related illness.Michael was a self-described homebody who was happiest playing with his dogs at his country house, but his career brought him into contact with music and fashion’s biggest stars. “What struck me instantly was how down to earth and what a sweet, beautiful soul he was,” the supermodel Naomi Campbell wrote in an email. “He was unique, a one-of-a-kind divine personality of our time.”IN THE RAPID-ASCENT stage of his career, Michael was a remarkably prolific songwriter: Starting in 1982, Wham! (the duo he formed with Andrew Ridgeley) had four Top 10 U.K. singles in a row. The pair’s second album, “Make It Big,” gave them three No. 1 songs in the United States: “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go,” “Careless Whisper” and “Everything She Wants.” When I interviewed Michael following the breakup of Wham!, he described the duo as a carefully plotted return to pop escapism. “I can understand why people wanted to punch me out,” he admitted.Everything Michael learned about craft and marketing conjoined on his first solo album, “Faith” (1987), which made him a star on the magnitude of Michael Jackson or Madonna. But the celebrity he’d desired and attained “had taken me to the edge of madness,” he says in “Freedom Uncut.”For the release of his next album, “Listen Without Prejudice Vol. 1,” he insisted his name and face not appear on the cover. He refused to promote the record or appear in his own videos. And in his song “Freedom! ’90,” he deconstructed pop stardom and exploded the foundational illusion of fandom: “I don’t belong to you, and you don’t belong to me.” It was, regardless of its message, a massive hit.Michael felt that his record company, Sony, was not promoting his new album avidly enough, and in 1992, he sued in the hope of terminating his contract. By then, he’d met Feleppa and felt loved for the first time in a sexual relationship. “I was happier than I’d ever been in my entire life,” he says in a “Freedom Uncut” voice-over.Andrew Ridgeley and Michael performing as Wham! in 1985, supporting their second album.Michael Putland/Getty ImagesHis disenchantment with stardom collapsed into depression over the following years. In June 1994, a little more than a year after Feleppa died, Michael lost the Sony case. In 1997, his beloved mother, Lesley, died of cancer. And in 1998, he was arrested in a Beverly Hills park for committing a “lewd act” with an undercover policeman, which is when he came out as gay and declared, “I don’t feel any shame whatsoever.”In the midst of these troubles, he released a 1996 album, “Older,” which included the Top 10 hits “Jesus to a Child,” written in tribute to Feleppa, and “Fastlove.” (Michael called “Older” “my greatest moment,” and an expanded edition will be reissued on July 8.) But he made only one more album of original songs in the following 20 years before his death.“Freedom Uncut” vivifies Michael for younger generations that didn’t live through the Pop Star Wars of the ’80s. He loved and emulated Black music, which created controversy in the moment — George Benson’s eyes nearly rolled back into his head when he announced Michael’s 1989 American Music Award win in the favorite soul/R&B album category. But time often engenders empathy, and the singer is now viewed as an ally. “Michael’s journey as a working-class gay white man from London who loved Black music and Black culture gave him an intersectional legacy that few artists (save Prince) will ever achieve,” Jason Johnson wrote in The Root, a website that focuses on African American issues, two days after the singer died.The fact that Michael was able to write, arrange and produce at such a high level places him in “the rarefied air of Sly Stone, Prince or Shuggie Otis,” Mark Ronson added in a phone interview. “It’s crazy, because he made incredible R&B music, but he didn’t go to America to record it” with Black musicians, he noted. “There wasn’t the insecurity of being a white soul boy from England.”Ronson also hears melancholic or even mournful qualities in Michael’s music: “A lot of our favorite artists sound catchy and peppy, but when you peel back one or two layers, you see somebody who’s dealing with serious inner demons.”Michael onstage accepting an American Music Award. The musician won two Grammys for his solo work.Alan Greth/Associated PressIN 1984, WHEN Michael was already a gleaming pop phenom in England, he went on TV and introduced David Austin, who was singing his debut single, “Turn to Gold,” which Michael wrote with Austin and produced. “I’ve known this young man since he was 2 years old,” Michael said, before declaring his pal “the biggest star of 1984.”Austin recalled, “He was telling a porky pie,” and laughed, using Cockney rhyming slang for a lie. “We’d known each other since he was the grand old age of 6 months, and I was 11 months older. From early childhood, right through to our late teens, we were together all the time.”David Austin is a stage name; he was born David Mortimer, to Irish parents. George Michael was born Georgios Panayiotou, to an English mother and an industrious Greek Cypriot father who worked in a fish and chips shop and became a restaurateur.Austin doesn’t often give interviews. Although he’s sometimes described as Michael’s manager, he wasn’t — he was a collaborator, an adviser, a deputy and since his friend’s death, he’s been in charge of the estate’s artistic decisions. In the course of a 70-minute phone call, he talked warmly about Michael, sometimes referring to him in the present tense, and joked about his own modest recording career. (“What career?”)His father made trumpets and other instruments for the British music company Boosey & Hawkes. Their home was full of instruments, and Austin learned clarinet and guitar, while Michael played drums. “We both aspired to be pop stars,” he said.By age 6, Austin had learned to use a Revox recording machine, and he recorded four or five songs with Michael, including “Crocodile Rock” by Elton John, “Wig Wam Bam” by the Sweet, who were Michael’s favorite band, and their first co-written original, called “The Music Maker of the World.” (“I’m never going to tell you what the lyrics are, because I’m going red talking about it,” he said, and chuckled.)The two friends had a band called Stainless Steel, and they decorated Michael’s bass drum with the band’s initials. “But they were slanted S’s,” Austin recalled, which made them look like the Nazi Schutzstaffel logo. “One of the parents came up — ‘Right, off with that!’ We were like, ‘What?’ We hadn’t been taught about World War II yet.”After that, Michael and Austin played in a five-piece ska band called the Executive, with their pal Andrew Ridgeley. “We were terrible, but everyone loved us,” Michael had told me years ago.But when the Executive broke up, Michael and Ridgeley kept working together, finding almost immediate success as Wham! while Austin chased a solo career. “It was very hard at the time, watching my two best friends have enormous success,” Austin admitted. “It took me a few years to accept.”The success of Wham! “opened the door to the industry for me,” Austin continued. But he turned out not to be the biggest star of 1984. After Wham! broke up in 1986, he and Michael went to the south of France and tried to write Austin’s next single. Michael wrote “I Want Your Sex,” which Austin demoed, and the two wrote “Look at Your Hands” together. But Austin’s label didn’t love the songs, so Michael held on to them and released them on “Faith.” (That album has gone 10 times platinum, giving Austin considerable publishing royalties.)As a director, Austin’s strength was his rapport with Michael, and his inside understanding of the singer’s feelings and fears, going all the way back to Redhill Drive. He even knew Michael during his awkward phase: “People have no comprehension of what I looked like as a kid,” the singer had told me, laughing wildly. “I was such an ugly little bastard.”Austin confirmed his friend’s self-effacing analysis: “George didn’t feel attractive as a child,” he said. “People who go on to have extraordinary careers, quite often there’s something lacking in their life. The career is filling a void, and that’s what the extra drive is about.“When you initially get there, it’s everything you want.” he added. “Then when it becomes huge, you realize fame will never, ever fill that void.”Rather than repairing anyone’s bad feelings, fame is more likely to exacerbate them. Michael figured this out, Austin said, which is why he spent his last two decades among friends and family, more than in front of fans. “Now I’m gonna get myself happy,” he sang, and he did.“George and I used to fight as kids, and even as adults,” Austin said. “But we were incredibly close. Music, family, close friendships — those are the things in life that fill the void.” More