Welcome to the Indieheads Album of the Week discussion thread!
Every monday, we will select an album from our Essentials (or any other popular and acclaimed albums that didn't make the list) and make a thread for discussion on the album! We'll be sticking with the modern albums for now!
The write up today comes from me, everyone's favorite person who they all love
gorege michael is sexy
Album: Wham! - Make It Big
Listen to the Album!
Singles
Background
Michael and Ridgeley met at Bushey Meads School in Bushey near the town of Watford in Hertfordshire. The two at first performed in a short-lived ska band called The Executive, alongside three of their former school friends David (Austin) Mortimer, Harry Tadayon and Andrew Leaver. When this group split, Michael and Ridgeley eventually formed Wham!, signing with Innervision Records.
Michael took on the majority of roles and responsibilities within the band—composer, producer, singer, and occasional instrumentalist. Still teenagers, they promoted themselves as hedonistic youngsters, proud to live a carefree life without work or commitment. This was reflected in their earliest singles which, part-parody, part-social comment, briefly earned Wham! a reputation as a dance protest group.
The debut record to be released by the band was "Wham Rap! (Enjoy What You Do)" in June 1982. It was a double A-side including the Social Mix and the Anti-Social Mix. The record was not playlisted by BBC Radio 1 in the UK, partly because of the profanity in the Anti-Social Mix. Separate videos were recorded for each set of lyrics.
"Wham Rap!" did not chart for the group, but in October 1982 "Young Guns (Go for It!)" was issued. Initially, it also stalled outside the UK Top 40 but the band got lucky when the BBC programme Top of the Pops scheduled them after another act unexpectedly pulled out of the show.
Increasing success[edit] Wham!'s first manager was Bryan Morrison. The effect of Wham! on the public, especially teenage girls, was felt from the moment they finished their début performance of "Young Guns (Go for It!)" on Top of the Pops. Michael wore espadrilles, an open suede jacket, and rolled-up denim jeans. Ridgeley stood behind him, flanked by backing dancers Dee C. Lee and Shirlie Holliman. Afterwards, the song shot into the Top 40 at #24 and peaked at #3 in December. The following year (1983), Dee C. Lee began her work with Paul Weller in The Style Council, and was replaced by Pepsi DeMacque. Holliman and DeMacque would later record as Pepsi & Shirlie.
Wham! followed up "Young Guns (Go for It!)" with a reissue of "Wham Rap! (Enjoy What You Do)", "Bad Boys", and "Club Tropicana". By the end of 1983, Wham! were competing against pop rivals Duran Duran and Culture Club as Britain's biggest pop act. Their début LP Fantastic spent two weeks at #1 in the UK album charts in 1983.[3] Notoriety and increased newspaper and magazine coverage were duly achieved with their antics of placing shuttlecocks down their shorts during performances on their first tour, the Club Fantastic Tour.
It wasn't long after this that Ridgeley became conscious of legal problems with their initial contract at Innervision. While the legal battle raged, Innervision released a medley of non-single album tracks from Fantastic, entitled "Club Fantastic Megamix". Wham! publicly denounced the release and urged fans not to buy it. After all the legal wrangling, Innervision admitted there were royalty discrepancies with Wham!'s contract, the fall-out of which led to the bankruptcy and eventual dissolution of Innervision altogether in 1985.[citation needed]
Now signed to Epic Records (and other CBS Records imprints around the world), Wham! returned in 1984 with an updated pop image. These changes helped to propel Wham!'s next single, "Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go", to the top of the charts around the world. It became their first UK #1 single and rose to that position in the USA as well, accompanied by a memorable video of the duo with Pepsi and Shirlie, all wearing Katharine Hamnett T-shirts with the slogans "CHOOSE LIFE" and "GO GO".
The next single "Careless Whisper" was issued as a George Michael solo piece, yet unlike any Wham! single except "Wham Rap!" and "Club Tropicana", it was credited as co-written by Ridgeley. The song, about a remorseful two-timer, had more emotional depth than previous releases. It quickly reached #1, selling over 1.3 million copies in the UK.[4] "Careless Whisper" marked a new phase in George Michael's career, as he somewhat distanced himself from Wham!'s playboy image. In the U.S.—so as not to confuse American listeners just being exposed to Wham!—the single was billed as "Wham! featuring George Michael".
In the autumn of 1984, Wham! returned as a duo with "Freedom", another UK chart-topper and the first single for quite some time to reach #1 in the UK without an accompanying video. Wham! subsequently decided to use a video edited together from footage of their tour of China in time for "Freedom's" U.S. single release. The group by then had achieved three number-one singles in a row. In November, they released their second album, Make It Big, which quickly climbed to #1 on the album charts, and the band set off on an arena tour at the end of 1984.[5]
The double A-side single "Last Christmas/Everything She Wants" became the highest-selling single ever to peak at #2 in the UK charts. It stayed at #2 for five weeks and, to date, is the 24th best-selling single of all time in the United Kingdom, selling over 1.4 million copies in the UK.[4] Wham! donated all their royalties from the single to the Ethiopian famine appeal to coincide with the fund-raising intentions of Band Aid's "Do They Know It's Christmas?", the song which kept them out of the top spot. Nevertheless, Band Aid's success meant that Michael had achieved #1 status in the UK within three separate entities in 1984—as a solo artist, as one half of a duo, and as part of a charity ensemble.[6]
At the end of 1985, the U.S. Billboard charts listed "Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go" as the number-three song and "Careless Whisper" as the number-one song of the year.[7]
Review
Make It Big is undeniably Wham!'s magnum opus, and undoubtedly one of the single greatest and most complex pop albums ever released.
Released in 1984, Make It Big came out in a time of great turmoil, when Magic Johnson and Larry Byrd were dominating the NBA and Ronald Reagan getting reelected as well as Chernenko being the dude in charge of the Soviet Union led us all to believe that George Orwell's book was actually a prediction of the future. However, George Michael and Andrew Ridgely saw the world in the way they knew it could be, the lossless future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then but that's no matter, to-morrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther, until one fine morning... so we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the loss.
The album opens with the iconic "Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go," a moving and deeply philosophical number that really resonates with me. George Michael expresses his discontent and his hurt and anxiety in his relationship that he knows will never work because they are both insecure and can't address their emotions or their feelings and so the only way for them to ever be intimate is if they jitterbug. The title is the ultimatum, the final decision that George Michael makes: either you wake me up, or you go-go, but I'm actually gay so it's not a really big deal.
The next song on the record, "Everything She Wants," is a sexy and groovy piece of history. This deeply influential piece, which you can really hear in many staple indie artists such as LCD Soundsystem, Radiohead, Smash Mouth, and Father John Misty, is one of the single most deeply moving songs I've ever heard. George Michael is being used by a girl and he loves her so much but she is using him and he doesn't know what to do so he just concedes that he will give her whatever she wants over a sexy and 80s beat and I'm on Vicodin.
Consumerism and dishonesty is a common theme on this album; songs like Credit Card Baby address George Michael's lover who lies to him and uses him for his money, which George Michael doesn't really mind because he knows that Consumerism is a helpless pursuit that will leave you empty in the end, much like the characters of Gossip Girl. Instead, he lets it happen, as he knows that Consumerism will eventually win and the lover will learn their lesson and George Michael, being sexy enough as he is, will transcend reality and make "Last Christmas," showing that the most true gift you can give anyone isn't any wealth based item, in fact it is love, or more specifically the human heart, and that is very valuable as seen in Indiana Jones And the Temple of Doom, another very infuential piece of art.
The critical song on this album is Heartbeat, as it is the one that really shows you the true emotions of the album and the very complex feelings that are shown throughout it. See, if you didn't know, George Michael is gay, and in Heartbeat he understands that he cannot stay with a girl because he does not love her the way she deserves to be loved, and that breaks his heart and causes a lot of the tension and anxiety that is omnipresent in this album, and really shows the complex relationship between God and Man.
The final song, Careless Whisper, may be the best closing song ever made. It is widely credited as a George Michael solo track, and you can really hear his emotion all over it. It is played over a really sexy and sleazy saxophone thing and it's just really hot and George Michael is really hot and I kinda just want to sleep with him but in a really platonic way you know like good friends or platonic lovers.
My Favorite Lyrics
JITTERBUG
JITTERBUG
JITTERBUG
JITTERBUG
You put the boom-boom into my heart
You send my soul sky high when your lovin' starts
Jitterbug into my brain
Goes a bang-bang-bang 'til my feet do the same
But something's bugging you
Something ain't right
My best friend told me what you did last night
Left me sleepin' in my bed
I was dreaming, but I should have been with you instead!
Wake me up before you go-go
Don't leave me hanging on like a yo-yo
Wake me up before you go-go
I don't want to miss it when you hit that high
Wake me up before you go-go
'Cause I'm not plannin' on going solo
Wake me up before you go-go
Take me dancing tonight
I wanna hit that high (yeah, yeah)
You take the grey skies out of my way
You make the sun shine brighter than Doris Day
Turned a bright spark into a flame
My beats per minute never been the same
'Cause you're my lady, I'm your fool
It makes me crazy when you act so cruel
Come on, baby, let's not fight
We'll go dancing, everything will be all right
Wake me up before you go-go
Don't leave me hanging on like a yo-yo
Wake me up before you go-go
I don't want to miss it when you hit that high
Wake me up before you go-go
'Cause I'm not plannin'' on going solo
Wake me up before you go-go
Take me dancing tonight
I wanna hit that high (yeah, yeah, baby)
Jitterbug
Jitterbug
Cuddle up, baby, move in tight
We'll go dancing tomorrow night
It's cold out there, but it's warm in bed
They can dance, we'll stay home instead
Jiitterbug
Wake me up before you go-go
Don't leave me hanging on like a yo-yo
Wake me up before you go-go
I don't want to miss it when you hit that high
Wake me up before you go-go
'Cause I'm not plannin' on going solo
Wake me up before you go-go
Take me dancing tonight
Wake me up before you go-go, don't you dare to leave me hanging on like a yo-yo
Take me dancing
Talking Points
What do you think of the band's changing sound?
HAve you listened to this on tidal? it sounds great on flac
Do the recurring musical motifs help or hurt the album?
How do you feel about the use of cancer/hospice as a metaphor?
How do you feel about the mix of songs styles/construction the album has?
What are your favorite songs?
What are your favorite lyrics?
If you are interested in making a write up, go ahead and shoot me a PM, we can get you a date and an album!
Also, don't forget to be polite! Try to either discuss the album (or the band) or share your own critical analysis of it!
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