Listen Without POLLjudice Vol 1

Heal the Pain, a small gem

I really want to vote for something other than 'Freedom '90' but I can't!

^^^

It's not only the best song on the album but it's also the most 'this is actually George singing about himself' song. And unlike most songs where the singer sings about their actual life, George doesn't come across as a self-serving "oh pity me" passive-aggressive tosser. When I heard that he'd died, it was the first song I played.

http://images.eil.com/large_image/GEORGE_MICHAEL_WAITING%2BFOR%2BTHAT%2BDAY-102290.jpg

I will have a lot to say about this album in a few days.

But, first, he never looked hotter.

Secondly, this track is readily available at last:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=diTrzIONrgI

as a person of hellenic descent my gratitude for Georgios Kyriacos Panayiotou runs embarrassingly deep. if i were the patriarch "freedom! 90" would be one of the hymns to hard-won personal enlightenment in a bullshit world sung every sunday during the orthodox liturgy

and the b-side to the single slays too

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdOSUIXlI0I

I mentioned on Facebook that Freedom 90/came on in local.pub last Saturday and the whole place came alive with people singing along and dancing, but this whole album is insanely classic and I'm still voting for that.first time I.heard "Waiting for.that Day" because it was like the universe hugging me

then you'll love this 1990 documentary, in which he discusses how he built "Waiting for that Day," piece by piece:

https://youtu.be/zMSmOJH9cvE

I went for Cowboys & Angels. Something To Say would be in second place. Maybe his vocal?

Cowboys And Angels. Still one of the best songs i've ever heard.

Blows my mind how poorly the singles did in the UK

WAITING FOR THAT DAY 23
FREEDOM 90 28
HEAL THE PAIN 31
COWBOYS AND ANGELS 45

I mean if someone told me they all went Top 3 i'd have believed them.

It felt like they were all bigger at the time (except Cowboys And Angels)

really enjoyed the new documentary.
not sure i can listen to LWP tonight though.

mother's pride

He wasn't exactly champing at the bit to promote the record, was he? Instead, he threw a hissy fit at his record company for not doing all the promotion for him.

The new sleeve for this record is inappropriate and shit.

Anyone curious to know what Volume Two would have sounded like just needs to listen to 'Too Funky', which was supposed to be on it.

Sleeve credits George with new cover design. He’d obviously made peace with it.

Blows my mind how poorly the singles did in the UK

No performance of the LWP singles on TV e.g. Top Of The Pops and only 'Freedom 90' and 'Praying For Time' having actual videos (neither featuring GM) is a big factor in their pretty much entirely airplay-driven chart placings I think.

He wasn't exactly champing at the bit to promote the record, was he? Instead, he threw a hissy fit at his record company for not doing all the promotion for him.

this is covered at length in the Freedom docu thats online via Ch4 now.

Not sure why a complete wrong era photo of his is being used for the new cover, nor does it make any sense why the Older-era Unplugged performance is being paired with it

It's like he hired Morrissey to put it together

i said "mother's pride" and then immediately revisited the album and actually it could be any of them. "something to save," "cowboys and angels," ugh this album is incredible

The "Vol. 2" stuff on the new album is sooo much fun. For once the record company was right: they must've flipped when Michael said he was keeping only two dance songs on the original album.

Watching the documentary now. James Corden singing along may permanently ruin Praying For Time for me

How much of Corden is there? I may not watch if it's more than a couple of minutes.

The doc is on Channel 4 itself tonight at 10pm too.

the reason corden is in the docu becomes clear later on in it.

I wish this guy had put out more music.

The documentary misses the mark. I love watching George talk about himself , he's just so incredibly honest and fearless. I'd love to have hung out with him, I bet he was a right laugh. Instead we get lots of talking heads , not just Corden but Liam Gallagher and even Rocky Gervais talking mainly about himself as you'd expect. Boring crap about supermodels and how good the video for Freedom 90 is (I think it's shit) and stuff about record industry contracts that we've all already heard ad nauseam.

I told a friend last week that the musician whose death affected me most in 2016 -- not Bowie, not Prince -- was George Michael's.

Mine too, Alfred.

Me too.

Bowie's death was/is like being run over by a slow moving glacier. George's death was almost like a friend dying.

I personally thought the deaths of all of them were all unexpected and sucked.

I personally thought they all died.

George's death was almost like a friend dying.

this

I thought the documentary was mostly a waste of time to be honest. I loved hearing him talk about himself but he could have spoke a lot more about himself post-1997 when his music got more adventurous and his personal life became more relatable.

Also I'm not sure I buy "I didn't want to promote the record so I just hired the six most famous and beautiful women in the world to lip-synch instead", at least not the way he described it.

agreed.
the interesting stuff was definitely glossed over.
but given it was made by GM it was to be expected.

the aforementioned original South Bank Show from 1990 is probably a better watch. i thought it might come with the reissue.

it does

this freedom 90 / back to reality mix is owning me right now

xp oh! well that's something then, my bad.

I fucking love 'Praying for Time' ... the video is kinda ahead of its time too, in a way.

EXCUUUUSES

THE RICH DECLARE THEMSEEEELVES POOOOOOAAAHHH!

having a cover of a slow, downbeat Stevie Wonder album track as track 3 side 1, is surely one of the great casual-fan-alienating moments of all time.

it's my favorite song on the album!

I prefer it to Stevie's version, too.

But yeah, one of the things I like about this album (and Older, too) is that GM didn't take the easy route... the best thing for him to do career-wise - and he knew it - would have been to make Faith part 2 and to slog his guts out promoting the shit out of it. I don't think he was able to be that calculated, though - his music always seemed very personal.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

healthy showing for Cowboys And Angels.. good work ilx.

I wrote this: https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/george-michael-listen-without-prejudice-vol-1/

Shocked only 2 others picked "Praying for Time."

Yup, I pretty much knew that was gonna happen!

you and your television(s) taking a stand

fucking hell this song

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abgLZ_osUtk

this is the best album

how can i help youuuuuuuuuuu

This IS the best album, and I've been playing it incessantly for months

"Cowboys and Angels" should have got a lot more than six votes that's one of my favourite songs ever

Actually this is my not-from-this-year AOTY. And I've known it for years but I only fell in love this year and I really like it when that happens

I heard Heal the Pain today while having breakfast at the Premier Inn, and even though we could barely hear it my friend who didn't know it was already very impressed by the do-doo-*D*ooo arrangement.

Something to save 0

injustice!

"waiting (reprise)" is such a beautiful closer... i hear echoes of "let it be" at points (intentional?)

It's better.

I wish he'd released a remixed "Soul Free" as a single .

A lot of the evocations on the album are deliberate I think. I'm not sure if he ever name checked Morrissey/Smiths for Something to Save but maybe he didn't need to.

which smiths song is he referencing

None in particular, just that there seems to be a strong influence there and most if not all of the tracks take a distinct influence from someone.

I don't hear Smiths at all, no offense. Acoustic pop with electronic rhythms was both au courant in 1990 and also slightly radical, especially with his soul-inflected vocals. The guy covered among the darkest, most obscure of Stevie Wonder tracks and toured playing nothing but R&B covers by Gladys Knight, etc.

while we were at brunch last week, "Freedom 90" came on, but I could barely hear it over the restaurant noise. My wife, whose ears are better than mine in all senses, pointed it out and said "sounds like Primal Scream". This after I'd just read in the Gavin biography that Screamadelica (or at least "Movin on Up", I think) influenced GM and the song, which I'd never heard before.

wait...couldn't be "Movin on Up". Must've been "Loaded"?

Freedom '90 definitely indebted to Loaded I'd say, maybe Happy Mondays too more broadly, but more-so Loaded (same Sympathy for the Devil-type thing going on).

Re:Morrissey I don't mean the whole album, just Something to Save. Whenever GM sings like he does there its inherently soul-identified but I really do hear early Moz (and maybe later Smiths) in that song, in terms of chords, singing, arrangement (that slightly echoey guitar sound mixed with and sparse, querying strings). Always makes me think of Viva Hate or something.

I mean, why not? GM was a hungry radio listener.

"Freedom '90" is part of the pop-house lineage of Snap!, Black Box, and The Adventures of Stevie V, but like Lisa Stansfield he had shows of soul.

Freedom '90 is as baggy (or as "Loaded") as it gets IMO. Which I mean very positively - he found the sound he wanted and then took it to a place no one else could. He was definitely tuned into 1990 radio - Soul Free is a sort of SIIS tribute and he deliberately pursued the funky drummer break for WTTD, knowing it had been milked to death already, but put it under what he felt was the least obvious new home for it, all those acoustic guitars and "Procol Harum organs". So the slight cognitive dissonance being overwrit by the soothing music itself was deliberate.

yeah, I loved that part in this video

(also: he's smoking hot)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ss-QlLzv0k0

His point about Soul II Soul was from a Steve Wright interview from the same time, which like the South Bank Show is invaluable given the minimal amount of promo from around this time.

He did another Radio 1 interview with Simon Bates when Five Live was released where he said he hated explaining the Praying for Time lyrics in the SBS. The producers apparently really pushed for that bit and then wouldn't remove it when he asked.

"obviously about as unblack as you can get"!

At Christmas last year BBC Radio 2 did a poll of his best songs, and as I was listening to the countdown live I was getting a bit glum about Cowboys And Angels. I thought it would at least squeak inside the Top 20, but as they sped past Club Tropicana, Freedom, Everything She Wants and Fast Love it looked pretty much like a cert that it wouldn’t feature anywhere. And then..

https://www.musicweek.com/media/read/george-michael-s-top-songs-revealed-in-radio-2-poll-to-mark-four-decades-since-first-hit-single/084900

So weird that it wasn’t even a Top 40 hit!

"Too Funky" insanely too low on that list.

My go-to pick-me-up is the Ladies and Gentlemen... run of Outside->As->Fastlove->Too Funky->Freedom '90.

Yes (I'd extend to include "Star People 97")

A Different Corner at 2! That should have been number 1 but what a pleasure to see it so high.

In a just world Cowboys and Angels would also be at number 1 and have been a number 1. But again that's lovely and high, higher than on ilx's GM poll. It's definitely the fans voting, hence not-played-in-years You Have Been Loved (and C&A again) above almost all Wham chart-toppers.

Quite funny seeing the much disliked (and much forgotten) Toby Bourke single seal the bottom of the list. Do people really hate his gorgeous and surreal, 808s&H-ish True Faith that much?

I don’t think I ever heard of it. also, it didn’t necessarily come last, you could also say it just squeezed in surprisingly - “Shoot The Dog” (a #12 UK hit) completely missed this top 40.

I don’t know how many songs were in competition according to this definition:
To be eligible for inclusion on the station’s voting list, songs must have charted in the UK Top 75 and have been composed by George Michael, either on his own or as a co-writer, from his time in Wham!, as a solo artist, or when he sang with other artists as a part of a duet.

oops, didn’t mean to hide it:

To be eligible for inclusion on the station’s voting list, songs must have charted in the UK Top 75 and have been composed by George Michael, either on his own or as a co-writer, from his time in Wham!, as a solo artist, or when he sang with other artists as a part of a duet.

Yeah I spotted Shoot the Dog was missing afterwards, even though he ensured its shelf life was not really short by a) putting it (and Freeek) on Patience and b) giving it a prominent position on the 25 Live Tour.

this is suitable a place as any to say i’m listening to patience rn and it is fucking phenomenal

the “love action” sample in “shoot the dog” is genius

An album of - appropriately enough - patient epics, even though it was the precise lengthiness of everything which got it put penalised by reviewers at the time. Very rarely do I find any track I enjoy overstays its welcome so I don't really have a problem with that at all.

Flawless, both the original and and particularly the Shapeshifters remix, take me back to maybe the happiest times of my life.