My weekly chart (15 Jan 2024 - 21 Jan 2024)
That's what I like. That's what surrounds me. That's what creates my mood.
*Created by my preferences only*
Аll 10 chart positions in 4 minutes here -> https://youtu.be/9kbg2g9slhM
10. Fleur Electra - Dreams
9. Aidan Martin - Lonely People
8. Dennis Lloyd - Reasons
7. Nikow - кисті
6. Norah Jones - Running
5. PARIS - Only You Feat. Keepa
4. Manuel Riva X Eneli - Strangers to Lovers
3. David Kushner - Skin and Bones
2. BANSHEE - THE ANGEL IN THE SOUND
1. Victor Ray - Comfortable
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The Closet, Part 1.
“Everything She Wants” (1984)
Wham!
Columbia Records
(Written by George Michael)
Highest U.S. Billboard Chart Position – No. 1
Not since Warhol painted his silkscreens of Mao Zedong in the early 70s had a project as blatantly propagandistic as Wham!, and their second album, Make it Big, appear on US shores. It was a record with its intentions splashed across the LP cover in large, unironic text above the image it was selling: the nubile duo of George Michael and Andrew Ridgeley, hairdos perfectly coiffed, all done up like doe-eyed fashion models in high-end sportswear. Even the colors of the album were strategic: red, white, and blue. Wham! was clearly setting their ambitions straight for the Reagan 80s, and toward US domination.
Andy Warhol, "Mao", 1972, Silkscreen.
Like the Reagan 80s, the ideas behind the first single, “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go”, were as fun, retro and catchy as his signature jelly beans. I wasn’t terribly impressed with the song (first heard over the piped-in radio at the Chick-Fil-A I worked in at in the mall) until I saw the video. There he was: George Michael, costumed in short shorts, wearing a white sweatshirt that screamed Choose Life, hugging himself as he ponied and swam about in a sea of neon colors. It was then that the song really took off for me: George, Andrew, Pepsi and Shirlie, all having a romp, signaling that the New wave was over, and that something much bigger was ahead of us: pure, unadulterated fun. Of course I zeroed in on George, his Greek curls laboriously blown out into a perfectly feathered mane and dyed into the colors of artificial sunshine, and in the pivotal video moment, hugging himself tightly with fingerless cotton gloves, two gold-hooped earrings glittering for the camera. I am telling you, those earrings on George Michael were the gayest thing I had ever seen (not the straight “one” earring, but two), and thereby an annunciation: looking at him, right there on regular TV, I felt reborn.
Make it Big would spawn five top ten singles in the United States (if you count “Last Christmas”, a one-off that would appear as a double A side with “Everything She Wants” in England) and included three US number ones. “Everything She Wants”, which followed “Wake Me”, “Careless Whisper”, and “Freedom”, would be the last to be released from the album, and it was unique in that it did not seem to be cut from the same cloth as the other singles, which were in essence modeled after Motown. It was a song that also did not depend on a video to sell itself (not that they didn’t make one). I was in the bathroom blow-drying a crest into my swing bang when I first heard it on the radio, and I know I must have frozen mid-bang. Something was very different with this track. First and most importantly it was entirely built on a synthesizer, from the Linn drum bongos that open it (George’s rough demo sample was kept for the final product) to the beautiful synth notes; in fact, like “Last Christmas”, the entire song was written and performed on one instrument, a Roland Juno-60, and both songs would be performed solely by George without any other musicians to sweeten it. He wrote and arranged it overnight, with no thought of it being a single until everyone responded to it so well. According to engineer Chris Porter:
"I think this was when George started to realize that if he wanted to, he could do everything himself. He could [just] cut out all these other people and their ideas."
Back in my bathroom, frozen in place, I wouldn’t have perceived any of this. What I was perceiving was something even gayer than George hugging himself in “Wake Me Up”: this new George had a voice speaking directly to me. “Everything She Wants” is a song about a man in an unhappy marriage, an unhappy 80s marriage, to be precise, because the female in question is fixated upon perfection through consumerism. George in the song is projecting the role of the long-suffering woman, and in an act of pure subversion instead plays the hard-working husband who has to pretend that he is fulfilled by having a wife. He is, in essence, bitching about having to play it straight, and in my mother’s bathroom I understood completely that a song dripping in sarcasm about being in a marriage was the queerest (and possibly most liberating) thing I had ever heard in my life up until that moment, the peak, the essence, being when he sings the lines:
And now you tell me that you're having my baby
I'll tell you that I'm happy if you want me to
But one step further and my back will break
If my best isn't good enough, then how can it be good enough for two?
Not only were these priceless, hilariously bitchy lyrics (the song is punctuated with his backing vocals screeching “work!”, “work!”) it directly expresses the reality of a gay man suffering miserably in the closet, and delivers a pungent commentary about the reality of living in the shadows of straight conformity. The most delicious thing about it was the era it was tucked into (with its new rush of bubblegum pop)—if the song had a real message, it was sure to be lost in all of the neon fun. The import was not, however, lost on me.
Looking gay, as Wham! did, does not make you gay. Making fizzy, lush pop songs, in and of itself, of course does not make you gay. Being a male pop duo does not make you gay. After taking over the world, hit after hit, the final No.1 for Wham! in “Everything She Wants” definitely, definitely made me gayer. In sound and vision, it would mark the beginning of George Michael as a real solo act, on the precipice of joining the ranks of the biggest pop stars in the world. Soon, George would have all the fame he could ever desire; sadly, it would prove to be the biggest closet of them all.
Last Christmas, 1984
Written in 1983, recorded in August of 1984, Wham’s “Last Christmas” would of course be announced as a December release (George had performed the song alone in a studio fully decorated for Christmas with engineer Chris Porter to set the mood).
In the UK there is a long history and competitive spirit surrounding a Christmas No. 1 , which meant the hit should be the last to chart for the year. Famous examples of a Christmas No. 1 in the UK would include The Beatles’ “I want To Hold Your Hand” (1963), The Human League's “Don’t You Want Me” (1981) and Pet Shop Boys’ “Always on My Mind” (1987). In 1984, during the filming of Band Aid’s “Do They Know It’s Christmas”, which was produced for famine relief in Ethiopia by Bob Geldof, one can see George Michael lamenting that the song they were recording would surely keep the Wham! track from going to No.1, and he was right. “Do They Know It’s Christmas” won the year, with “Last Christmas” coming in as No.2. He had smiled shyly when he said it, but one could tell he was over it. If George Michael was anything in the 80s, it was ambitious.
In 2006, Michael released a Greatest Hits, Twenty-Five, featuring four new songs, one of which, “Understand”, would serve as a sort of apologia to “Everything She Wants”, imagining the couple 30 years later, and seeing the relationship more from the woman’s point of view.
George always insisted that “Everything She Wants” was his all-time favorite Wham! song, and he performed it regularly in concert.
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My weekly chart (19 Feb 2024 - 25 Feb 2024) #TimeMachine
That's what I like. That's what surrounds me. That's what creates my mood.
*Created by my preferences only*
Аll 10 chart positions in 4 minutes here -> https://youtu.be/GERmMDONlsc
10. The Black Eyed Peas - Bebot
9. THE HARDKISS - Make-Up
8. Chrome Sparks - Marijuana
7. Klaxons - Golden Skans
6. Ne-Yo - so sick
5. People In Planes - Instantly Gratified
4. The Pussycat Dolls - How Many Times,How Many Lies
3. Rihanna - Stay (feat. Mikky Ekko)
2. The Erised - Pray
1. The Temper Trap - Sweet Disposition
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