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Credit: Far Out \/ Alamy<\/p>\n
Despite being one of the biggest pop duos in the 1980s, Wham!<\/a> were seen by many as nothing more than a nuisance entity manufactured for commercialism. They were slapped with a barrage of insults by the stuffier crowd in music.<\/p>\n Much of their material and the way they presented themselves was seen as the ultimate embodiment of formulaic manipulations curated to sell as many units as possible and nothing else. This was a rather obvious misunderstanding that many of the decade\u2019s musical ringleaders joined in on, even ones as significant to the game as The Cure frontman Robert Smith.<\/p>\n The gothic icon once had some choice words to say about his pop nemesis. \u201cI could write songs as bad as Wham!\u2019s if I really felt the urge to, but what\u2019s the point? So many songs these days are very shallow,\u201d he told Ro Newton in 1985. \u201cI hate the idea some bands have of refining songwriting. I can sit down and write a single pretty easily \u2013 it\u2019s like a pretend exercise.\u201d<\/p>\n George Michael himself was more than aware of the criticism and scrutiny, but he was also in a constant battle with deeper, more personal challenges<\/a>, alongside the constant fight to feel creatively liberated in a way that actually made him feel satisfied as an artist. He\u2019d have felt like this without the continuous disregard from his peers, but the backlash did give him impetus, leading to solo projects that established him as a singular force.<\/p>\n However, there\u2019s no dismissing how much Wham! gave Michael his own stage, with a string of hits that set them apart as distinctive pop energies \u2013 even if they attracted their share of haters along the way. Such is a part of revolutionising the pop world anyway, and that backlash only enhanced their cultural impact in the long run. <\/p>\n Despite their successes, of which there were many, Michael was able to later reflect on things he might have done differently. For instance, \u2018Bad Boys\u2019, the third single from their debut album, Fantastic, was written by the singer when he was only 19, tackling the perspective of a teenager who keeps defying his parents. The song did well on the charts, taking position behind another monolith of 1983, The Police\u2019s \u2018Every Breath You Take\u2019.<\/p>\n However, reflecting on the track in the 1987 issue of Smash Hits, Michael admitted to feeling embarrassed by the track. \u201cI\u2019m not embarrassed by the whole Wham! thing at all,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m embarrassed by \u2018Bad Boys\u2019 \u2013 that was such a bad record.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Further reading: From The Vault<\/strong><\/p>\n Adding, \u201dThe song and the video, they are an embarrassment to me now. Funnily enough, I listened to \u2018Bad Boys\u2019 the other day, and I suddenly realised that with the backing track I was trying to rip off an old Was Not Was song \u2018Out Come The Freaks\u2019, and I realised how shitty and tinny it sounded in comparison to the original.\u201d<\/p>\n He also said that he felt it was a good record when they first made it, but that he also wasn\u2019t confident enough with what he was doing and was going through a \u201cparticularly heavy time<\/a>\u201d with management, meaning that he just wanted to get the project done, before realising about a week later that he didn\u2019t like the song at all.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cPeople still love it to this day, too, but I just can\u2019t see it myself,\u201d he added, before rushing to defend that it\u2019s not Wham! that he felt icky towards \u2013 just \u2018Bad Boys\u2019. \u201cNo! I haven\u2019t turned my back on the shuttlecock days. It was just that record \u2013 I would never say I was embarrassed by Wham! because it was good fun, you know. I just can\u2019t see myself ever doing it again.\u201d<\/p>\n\n
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<\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Credit: Far Out \/ Alamy Despite being one of the biggest pop duos in the 1980s, Wham! were…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":511841,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[268],"tags":[221898,434,18,117,44445,19,17],"class_list":["post-511840","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-221898","tag-celebrities","tag-eire","tag-entertainment","tag-george-michael","tag-ie","tag-ireland"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116669909295431590","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/511840","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=511840"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/511840\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/511841"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=511840"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=511840"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=511840"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}