FEATURE:
Second Spin
George Michael - Older
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I will move out of the 1990s…
for the next album in this feature, as I am aware that I have included a lot of music from the ‘90s lately. I also feel bad for including George Michael twice in recent weeks for, maybe, the wrong reasons. I recently wrote about Wham! and their hit, Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go, arguing how it is not a guilty pleasure (some people feel it is). Now, I am trying to get people to look at George Michael’s 1996 album, Older, in a new light. I might do him justice one day and include his phenomenal 1987 debut, Faith, in Vinyl Corner. The reason I am including Older is because it is such a fine album that not only had some mixed reviews (though many were positive); many of the songs on the album are not played. Even the biggest hits are not spun as much as they should be! I think Older is one of these albums where the non-singles are really strong, and the singles are timeless. If some critics were not completely on board with George Michael’s third solo album, the success it accrued speaks for itself:
“Older was a huge commercial success, especially in the European markets. In the UK the album was largely anticipated, and debuted at No. 1 with an impressive 281,000 copies, becoming one of the biggest debuts ever in British history (it currently ranks as the 23rd fastest-selling album in the UK). It is also Virgin's fastest-selling album of all time. It became Michael's biggest-selling album in his homeland, achieving over 1.8 million copies sold, and receiving a 6× Platinum certification by the BPI on 5 December 1997. In the UK, it spent a total of 147 weeks inside the top 200, 99 of them on the top 75, and 35 of them on the top 10 (including 23 consecutive weeks).The steady sales of the album were the result of good promotion market and the release of six hit singles throughout a two-year period”.
If you need some songs to remind you of Older, I am sure you are familiar with Jesus to a Child and Fastlove. Older and Spinning the Wheels are also big songs from the album. Whilst my favourite George Michael tracks do not appear on Older – Faith is from the album of the same name; Outside was the first single from his 1998 greatest hits album, Ladies & Gentlemen: The Best of George Michael -, I really love Older. It is a shame that some feel the album only has a couple of brilliant moments. This is what AllMusic wrote in their review:
“Older is the album that many observers initially believed Listen Without Prejudice, Vol. 1 to be -- a relentlessly serious affair, George Michael's bid for artistic credibility. It's an album that makes Listen Without Prejudice sound like Faith. Michael has dispensed with the catchy, frothy dance-pop numbers that brought him fame, concentrating on stately, pretentious ballads -- even "Fastlove," the album's one dance track, lacks the carefree spark of his earlier work. Although Michael's skills as a pop craftsman still shine through -- several songs are well-constructed ballads that rank with his best material -- his earnestness sinks the album. It is one thing to be mature and another to be boring. Too often, Michael mistakes slight melodies for mature craftsmanship and Older never quite recovers. When melodies do pop up, he doesn't deliver them with enough force to make an impact, and the album slowly disappears as a result”.
I will wrap it up soon but, before then, I want to bring in a positive review from NME. It is interesting reading their thoughts on, what I think is one of the stronger albums of the 1990s:
“Lyrically, George is still fighting off maturity with all (young) guns blazing. "My friends got their ladies/They're all having babies/But I just want to have some fun!" he declares on the impeccable 'Fast Love'. On 'Move On' he even invokes the chinking-glass intro of 'Club Tropicana', but makes sure that it leads into a gorgeous, jazz club schmooze, just what his audience are after these days. No more passing out under tables at Club 18-Dirty, George seems to be saying. Let's do it the classier way; dining out at Mezzo, a cool-eyed seduction at his place and then, well, breakfast at Tiffany's.
Upbeat the rest of it is not. 'Jesus To A Child' we know about, while the eerily arabesque 'The Strangest Thing' and 'To Be Forgiven' find George lost in a flood of distant, mystical flutes and even the faint twang of sitar. Cool.
He has his customary dig at the fame game in 'Star People' ("Who gives a f about your problems, darling?" George growls cattily, the victim of one too many glittery ligs) while the final track, 'Free', shimmers to a close wordless, before George, the sweetie, whispers, "It feels good to be free" in its dying seconds.
What more could you ask for? Simply Red may go for the jugular every time with their unnervingly upbeat pop razzle, but George is just too much of an old soul boy smoothie for that. He knows that the art is to never look like you're trying; no matter what the provocation, no matter how frustrating the six-year hiatus might have been.
The real return of the mack then, despite the beardy haircut and the fact he's still so touchy about bad press, NME had to buy their own copy of 'Older' to hear it.
He really needn't have worried”.
As it comes up to its twenty-fifth anniversary in May, I think that people should give George Michael’s Older another listen. It is a tragedy that he is no longer with us (Michael died in 2016) as his voice is one of the finest of his generation. It seems like Older was an important album for George Michael. I found a piece published on the GM Forever website.. They quoted from his final interview that Red Line posted in 2017:
“GM: I sat at a keyboard in some studios in Notting Hill which was where I’d recorded a lot of Faith. And I sat at keyboard, played a very simple string part, added a very, very gentle guitar part. My way of making music is very strange; it’s very strange. Generally, I put my backing tracks together very simply on keyboards. In this case, I think I’d added a little guitar. But the moment I think there’s something coming, there’s something important coming, I shove everybody out of the room. I go in; I know how to work the vocal recorder that we use and then I just sing on repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat. I sing and I sing and I sing and it’s all total stream of consciousness rubbish that people would laugh their heads off if they heard what I was singing. And then I sang “Like Jesus to a Child” – simple as that.
GM: And I thought, “Oh my God, that’s him! That’s him and me, like Jesus to a child.” And within probably a day, the track was almost finished, which is REALLY unusual for me. And within a week, I was singing it in front of the Brandenburg Gate because I was so excited I was writing again. I could write again and not only that but I’d written probably the most personal song I’d ever written in the space of a day, day and a half, and it was all systems go. It was all systems go from that point on.
I wrote Older within about I suppose eight months, and months I think I wrote the best most healing piece of music that I’ve ever written in my life with that album”.
I shall leave it there but, for those who have shrugged off the 1996 album or only listened to the big hits, I would urge them to have a deeper listen. With some big hits and excellent deeper cuts working alongside one another, Older is a terrific and hugely varied and likeable album that…
GROWS stronger with age.