LUSH LIFE

The transition from pop star to "serious" artist is a difficult one, beset by suspicion from fans, snide remarks from critics and secret doubts within the musician themselves. Yet that challenging migration is the task George Michael set himself after a hugely successful career with chart toppers Wham!

Completing the migration took time and was no mean feat. Older, Michael’s third solo effort, was released in May 1996. It is an introspective album, dripping with sadness and yearning. It is a musically sophisticated album, with several servings of Brazilian bossa nova and a lounge sensibility quite at odds with the dance-pop scene of Michael’s early triumphs. Yet it is a very human album, providing a window into the life and struggles of the singer. Older is also a reflective album, replete with songs exploring passion and loss; the kind of depth simply not possible for a hot young pop star. But of course, by June 1996, George Michael was 33 years old. He was a lifetime away from the fresh-faced twenty year old who had a #1 smash with Wham!’s first album, Fantastic.

After his second solo effort, 1990’s Listen Without Prejudice Vol.1, Michael fell out with his record company, big time. The wrangling and acrimony played out in court, the singer eventually losing his case against Sony Music. This meant a gap of six years between albums, an eon in pop music. Michael was not totally absent, however. His duet with Elton John on the piano player’s "Don’t Let the Sun Go Down On Me" was a hit, while his performance with Queen at the Freddie Mercury tribute concert was released as an E.P. and reached #1 in the UK.

On the personal front, Michael began a relationship with a Brazilian clothes designer, Anselmo Feleppa, in 1992. It was a hugely important relationship he would describe as the happiest in his life, and Michael was devastated when Feleppa contracted HIV and died from AIDS related illness the following year. That loss plays out across Older, never more so than in the superb opening song, "Jesus to a Child", a moving tribute to his love. Indeed, Older is a daring personal statement. "Spinning the Wheel" addresses gay relationships in the time of AIDS, while the album’s most up tempo song, "Fastlove" is about cruising for casual sex (as Michael himself baldly stated in the documentary Freedom). So there is sex—a major part of the George Michael songbook—but also loneliness and melancholy. In fact, Older sounds like a mash up of a Sade album and a world-weary Frank Sinatra à la "In The Wee Small Hours". Jazz tropes and recurring bossa nova beats suggest the spirit of Brazilian composer Antonio Carlos Jobim hovers over much of the music.

Older was very successful in the UK and in Australia, where it reached the top of the album charts, but was less well received in the USA. Perhaps this older, more introspective George Michael was not to everyone’s tastes, yet for those who are happy to lay back into the gentle grooves and Brazilian rhythms of Older it is a record to savour.