George Michael RIP (53)

Great cover

 

Wow, I'm a little surprised he got a "whole cover" like that. Great picture.

 

Another one I missed

Mother's pride baby boy
Mother's pride crazy boy
A soldier waiting for war
A soldier waving at the shore
A soldier now forevermore
Time will come
He'll hold a gun
His father's son
And in her heart the time has come
To lose a son
He'll hold a gun till kingdom come

 

the People and Newsweek magazine has issued a special edition for GM.
Here is the cover from The Newsweek

 

This is the first time I have seen this picture of George. It is a great picture.

 

Isn't uncut a rock centered magazine?

 

I have ordered the set back in Sept. I like the fact that disc 2 is almost like LWP2. here are the songs:
If You Were My Woman (Mixes and B sides)
2. Fantasy (Mixes and B sides)
3. Freedom (Edit) (Mixes and B sides)
4. Cowboys And Angels (Edit) (Mixes and B sides)
5. Soul Free (Special Radio Edit) (Mixes and B sides)
6. Freedom (Back To Reality Mix Edit) (Mixes and B sides)
7. Too Funky (single edit) (Mixes and B sides)
8. Crazyman Dance (Mixes and B sides)
9. Do You Really Want To Know (Mixes and B sides)
10. Happy (Mixes and B sides)
11. Freedom! (Back To Reality Mix) (Mixes and B sides)
12. Too Funky (Extended) (Mixes and B sides)
13. Too Jazzy (Happy Mix) (Mixes and B sides)
14. Calling You (Cover To Cover Live Wembley Arena) (Mixes and B sides)
15. Fantasy 98 (Mixes and B sides)
16. Heal The Pain (with Paul McCartney) (Mixes and B sides)
17. Desafinado (with Astrid Gilberto)

 

Didn't plan on getting this, but when I saw the tracks on this disc I have to get it!

 

Interesting analyses. I wish someone would write a book about his songs and lyrics. Sometimes they seem to be simple and straight forward, but often mean different things to different people.

 

Even more bizarre, the image in the quoted post back to you - that I could see yesterday - isn't showing today.

I feel like this guy:

 

I flipped through it yesterday at the newsstand. It is well done overall, with some nice pics.

But it made me incredibly sad to look at it. "These are wasted days" indeed.

 

Jeff, sorry if my following post sounds a bit like a rant.

I have heard lots of George's loyal fans complained about his wasted talent or time. It may be just me, who became a fan not too long ago. Yes, he was not prolific compared with some of his peers, and his outputs after Patience were sparse. But he had had a great run btw 82 to 99, even with 3-4 years of gap due to the Sony lawsuit.

I found that his albums and songs are with high quality, great depth and intelligence. He had evolved pretty dramatically from Fantastic to Patience. In the meantime, he was able to generate as many, if not more, hits than most more prolific artists, which is pretty remarkable considering he has almost done everything himself. Oh, I have not even mentioned his remarkable voice yet. To me, he was as great as anyone in the popular music.

 

Very much like Elvis. Very sad, he was my age.

 

George's output is very slim whichever way we look at it, only 6 albums in 34 years, and three of those albums only had 8 or 9 tracks.

 

No worries Julia. Your opinion as a relatively new fan is an interesting perspective. While there is something to be said for quality vs. quantity, and I applaud you for looking at the art he did leave us, it is impossible to describe the immense potential we felt as fans back then. George had it all, and if you had asked me in 1990 how we would someday reflect on his career, what his legacy would ultimately be, well the word unfulfilled would never have crossed my mind.

Remember, he quit touring from '91 - '06 and only released two albums of original material after LWP. Clearly he was in a lot of pain and it was his life that was derailed, not just his career.

 

Quality over quantity.

 

Yeah, you mentioned 91-'06. Knowing his life a bit recently, I think that his mother's death had huge impact on him and he probably had never really got over it.

To me, his heyday was probably btw 87 to 96, which gave us Faith, LWP and Older, which are masterpieces in my book. If I have to say what could have been, it would be finishing and releasing LWP2 and the Trojan Soul project. I think that the LWP25 box set should be called LWP1 and LWP2 (some songs on disc 2 I listed in another post) without the unplugged. The unplugged should be released as a separate CD along with a DVD.

Sometimes I thought it would have been great if someone had helped him organize his outputs a bit better as he did have materials that could have been released as two separate albums. One would be LWP2 (as mentioned above with a couple of covers like Tonight would be great), and another one contains songs from the Older era songs like Safe, You Know That I Want To, Outside, A Moment With You and some remix?

 

Man...this is a beautiful cover:

"Here's my indie folk rendition of George Michael's classic. It's still so sad and strange to me that he's gone. What a phenomenal songwriter...I hope you enjoy this small tribute to a great artist."

 

She is very talented. In the 2nd half, her version is more dramatic than George's.

 

This article talks about why George is a great singer. It got me a bit emotional while reading it.
WQXR - New York's Classical Music Radio Station »

 

Has anybody bought this? I haven't seen it around anywhere.

 

thanks for posting that Julia.

@SweetTea I think you will find this interesting.

 

That was a great read, thanks for posting.

 

Rediscovering George's music after his death made me regret not picking up a pristine copy of his debut at the yearly garage sale in the neighbourhood where I live - may check if it's still on offer next time around (in April).

George's passing has affected my daughter deeply (she is four! ) - ever since I mentioned it when she asked what I was reading, she's been bringing up how sad it is, and she's become a big fan of Club Tropicana and Careless Whisper, which I thought she might appreciate!