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Wham!

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"Wham" redirects here. For other uses, see Wham (disambiguation).
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Wham!

Wham! was a British pop duo formed in 1981 by George Michael and Andrew Ridgely. They were briefly known in the United States as Wham! U.K. due to a naming conflict with another band.

Beginnings

George and Andrew met at Bushey Meads School in Watford, England, UK, and performed in a band called The Executive before changing their name and signing to Innervision Records (later to CBS; Columbia in the US and Canada, and Epic for the rest of the free world). George took on the majority of roles and tasks within the band - composer, singer and occasional instrumentalist - but the contribution of Andrew as George's confidante, audience, inspiration and spokesman was crucial to the band's initial success. Still teenagers, they promoted themselves as hedonistic youngsters, proud to live a carefree life without work or commitment. This was reflective in their earliest singles.

In October 1982, the song Young Guns (Go For It) was issued. The song was an appeal from one youthful lad to his friend not to throw his life away so early on marriage. It stalled outside the threshold for the UK Top 40 but then Wham! got lucky when schedulers for Top Of The Pops - the all-important weekly BBC chart show on television - had to look outside the Top 40 (against normal selection policy) to fill a gap created by an act which had pulled out of recording. Wham!, as the act nearest the 40 mark which was climbing, were summoned, and a phenomenon immediately began.

Fantastic

The impact of Wham! on the public, especially teenage girls, was felt from the moment they finished their debut performance of Young Guns (Go For It) on Top Of The Pops. George's appearance helped; already a classically good-looking teenager, he wore espadrilles, a suede jacket slit open and rolled-up denim jeans. As he took the foreground, Andrew stood behind him, either side of backing singers D.C. Lee and Shirlie Holliman and the performance was as much one of acting as it was of singing (or miming, in truth), with George playing the part of the pleading goodtime lad and Andrew the guy who had been drawn into commitment. The song shot into the Top 40 at #24 as a result and peaked at #3 in December. The following year (1983) D.C. Lee ran off to marry Paul Weller of The Style Council, and was replaced by Pepsi DeMacque. Holliman and DeMacque would later record music themselves as Pepsi and Shirlie.

Wham! followed up the song with Wham Rap! (Enjoy What You Do) (a song about the joys of a leisurely life, the full version of which weighed in at almost seven minutes long); Bad Boys (about a strained relationship between a rebellious teenage lad and his worried parents) and Club Tropicana (a satire of the Club 18-30 scene). Each song came with a memorable video and Wham! by the end of 1983 were rivaling Duran Duran and Culture Club as Britain's biggest pop act. Notoriety and column inches were duly achieved with their antics of placing a shuttlecock down their shorts, and their first album, Fantastic! was a #1. As the duo disappeared at the end of 1983 to record their next material, a party medley of their early singles, entitled Club Fantastic Megamix, kept their name alive.

Make It Big

Wham! returned in May 1984 with a more presentable image. The moody look in leather jackets had been replaced by smiles, coloured clothing and an aim to promote themselves more as sex symbols rather than spokespeople for a disaffected generation. Wake Me Up Before You Go Go, a song George wrote from a note left to him in his hotel room one night by Andrew, became their first UK #1 (it also got to the top in the USA) and was capped by a memorable video of the duo, plus the ubiquitous Pepsi and Shirlie, wearing Katharine Hamnett T-shirts with the slogans CHOOSE LIFE and GO GO. These became essential fashion items as Hamnett wrote herself into pop culture, having simultaneously designed the FRANKIE SAY T-shirts for Frankie Goes To Hollywood.

Although some critics felt that Wham! represented bubblegum pop of the lowest kind, many were starting to appreciate George's real ability as a songwriter, while also bemoaning the status of Andrew, who had started to play a guitar but whose overall contribution was deemed to be lightweight. With some bizarre contradiction, the next single was issued as a George Michael solo piece, yet unlike any Wham! single, this one was co-written by Andrew. Careless Whisper reached #1 and in the autumn of 1984 Wham! came back as a duo with Freedom, another chart-topper, In November, they released their second album, Make It Big, which coasted to #1 in the album charts.

Wham! contributed to the Band Aid project, with George providing vocals as the song usurped their own Christmas release, Last Christmas/Everything She Wants, the former of which featured a video set in a seasonal ski resort. It became the biggest selling single ever to peak at #2 in the UK charts, and as such Wham! donated all the royalties to the Ethiopian famine appeal to coincide with the fundraising intentions of Band Aid, the song which beat them to the top spot. Band Aid's success meant, however, that George had been at #1 within three different entities in 1984 - as a solo artist, half of a duo and part of a charity ensemble.

China and Live Aid

In April 1985 Wham! took a break from recording to embark on an enormous world tour which included a groundbreaking 10-day visit to China. The China excursion was a masterful publicity scheme devised by one of their two managers Simon Napier-Bell and it culminated in a concert at the Worker's Gymnasium in Beijing in front of 10,000 people. The visit to China was the one of the first tours of that country by Western pop musicians. Film producer Martin Lewis and director Lindsay Anderson documented the 10-day tour in their film Foreign Skies.

George grew a beard and with Andrew appeared onstage at Live Aid although they didn't perform as Wham! - George sang Don't Let The Sun Go Down On Me with Elton John while Andrew joined Kiki Dee in the row of backing singers. In November, they released I'm Your Man which went straight to #1 in the UK charts. By this time Culture Club and Duran Duran were in sharp decline and Wham! were the standout act in British pop music. George began a relationship with model Kathy Yeung while Andrew hooked up with Keren Woodward of Bananarama and took up a hobby of rally driving, famously crashing one car before the end of 1985. Last Christmas was re-issued for the festive season and again made the UK Top 10 - peaking at #6 - while George took up offers he was starting to receive to add his voice to other artists' songs, performing backing vocals for David Cassidy and Elton John on successful singles.

The Final

George's desire to create music targeted to a more sophisticated audience than the duo's primarily teenage fan-base, led to George and Andrew announcing the break-up of Wham! in 1986, destined to take place after a farewell single and album, and a grand finale concert at Wembley Stadium. The single was The Edge Of Heaven (later flip-sided with Where Did Your Heart Go?) which reached #1 in June 1986. The album was called The Final (released in North America as Music from the Edge of Heaven with alternate tracks), and the two duly said goodbye to their audience - 100,000 of whom attended the 8-hour event - and each other with an emotional embrace at the end of the show, after five years and many millions of album sales. The film of their tour of China - Foreign Skies - received its world premiere as part of the festivities, making it the most highly-attended film premiere in history.

Andrew's half-hearted solo career was over almost as soon as it began, and he retired on his Wham! royalties to Cornwall with Woodward, whom he later married. He has never needed to work since - although he became a partner in a firm which manufactured surfing goods - and has largely stayed out of the public eye. He remains in Cornwall. George, who had enjoyed his second solo #1 earlier in the year with A Different Corner, began a permanent solo career which immediately endeared him to the adult audience he desired to reach.

Last Christmas was given its third consecutive festive release in December 1986 although this time it stalled outside the Top 40. Remarkably, no Wham! single has ever been re-issued to the UK charts since then and it took until 1995 before a Wham! song was given the cover version treatment, when Danish singer Whigfield did her own version of Last Christmas. The Following year, Lisa Moorish, girlfriend at the time to Oasis' Noel Gallagher, recorded "I'm Your Man" for release into he charts. According to newspaper rumours, she apparently shared the studio with George Michael, who at the time was putting the finishing touches to the "Older" Album. At the time of release, Michael legally couldn't be associated with the song, but is rumoured to have provided the male vocal section in the chorus. Since then, Shane Richie has covered I'm Your Man as a fundraising song for the BBC charity telethon Children In Need.

George was initially scathing about his time in Wham! claiming the duo were ripped off and put under constant pressure while also bemoaning many of the songs, especially those from the first album. However, his take on the era has softened in more recent times. He still happily performs Everything She Wants - one of the more critically-acclaimed songs from the Wham! era - at his solo concerts.

Discography

Albums

Hit singles

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