Wake Me Up Before You Go Go The first time I saw this video, no kidding, I thought it was a put on. It seemed so cheesy, so tacky. The dancing is horrific, and I couldn't decide what they were aiming at with the Choose Life shirts. It felt like some well-meaning but incompetent charity created a PSA to encourage kids to stay in school or eat their vegetables or some such. But because the charity was out of touch with mainstream culture, the song and performance came across all wrong, like an Up With People (remember them?) of the 80s. I couldn't get past the idea that they were trying to sell me some notion I really didn't want to buy. Like that sinking feeling you get when you realize your new friend is trying to convince you to join his/her religious sect as you slowly back away. ('Choose Life'? Was choosing death really a viable alternative? They made it tempting). I can hear the Motown influence, but did any Motown song ever stoop to the lyrical depths this song did? The 'jitterbug' part was annoying, but the rest of the words were no bonus, either. You put the boom boom into my heart? Rhyming go-go with yo-yo? Oh oh no no.... George Michael himself struck me as artificial to an uncanny valley degree; he looks like the new wave version of Adam Rich from Eight Is Enough in this video. That kid always bugged the daylights out of me. So yeah, I'm not a big fan of this song. Fortunately for Wham!UK (remember that name?), they got a lot better, and after Michael ditched the dead weight (it took me this long to take a dig at Andrew Ridgeley!), better still. But it was an inauspicious start for sure.
Homosexuality was illegal between men in the UK up until the late 60s (I think), but NOT between women. Not sure what the reasoning was, but it was probably sexist. EDIT: one site claims lesbianism was never illegal in the UK because Queen Victoria did not believe women were capable of such things (!). Don't know if that's true, but it is funny regardless to imagine that conversation.
"Blue Moves" came out October 1976. "Single Man" came out October 1978. It's been a while since I took a math class, but I'm pretty sure that's 2 years!
I don't think most did. We just weren't as tuned in to that 40-45 years ago as we are now. Manilow wasn't manly, but as I recall, he didn't behave in an effeminate way. Sure, he made soppy tunes for suburban women, but that didn't make him "gay". I admit I don't think I knew Mathis was gay until this thread! Though I dated some, I didn't have a true girlfriend until I was 29. I just made the cut!
To some degree, women are encouraged to "dabble". It turns on guys and it's viewed as innocent fun. Guys experimenting with guys? Not viewed that way at all. Funny - about a year ago, I sat next to a gay guy at an Aerosmith concert. I don't know how our conversation went down that path, but I told him I'd never "dabbled" with guys, and he was shocked. So maybe male "experimentation" is more common than I thought!
this reminds me of the following Creed Bratton (of The Grassroots) quote while playing the character Creed Bratton on The Office...
I have some vague recollection of reading that Dr. Joyce Brothers herself came up with this theory as to why Liberace was the second most popular singer of the mid-fifties (behind Mr. Presley, whose appeal was quite different).
Women who seem butch are more likely to get crap than more feminine gals (ask Martina Navratilova). The rule seems to be: if hetero guys get turned on imagining her with another woman, she gets a pass.
I thought it was an announcement that they were anti-abortion. Not discussing it, just sayin'... I'm sure there were a few, but that Doris Day reference in the first verse was probably one of his little hints that no one picked up on. Sure he was artificial. That's why he wanted to end Wham! and present himself as a "serious" artist. I never really watched "Eight Is Enough". It wasn't part of my generation. Yup.
No, you said he took a two-year break. The end of 1976 and 1978 is not quite two years. Time for you to go back to kindergarten.
So the span from October 1976 to October 1978 doesn't equal 2 years? Maybe you're being pedantic about the meaning of "break". In this context, it means "Elton went 2 years between albums". Which he did, almost to the day!
I disagree. I said before that we were making fun of Elton John and Rod Stewart being gay back in the mid-70s. (No, Stewart is not gay.) Exactly, but by the time of his 1978 live album, people started to wonder. I don't recall when it was that I discovered what a bathhouse was. Maybe sometime in the early 80s when the AIDS epidemic was rising? I do remember that by 1977, Barbra Streisand somehow became associated with gays. I just remember how it was forbidden for a guy to like her music by that time. I had to enjoy her albums in secret. Later I found out that my father liked Barbra Streisand's music. Same here! Late bloomers. Hey...aren't bloomers what they used to call training bras?
You misunderstand: I don't claim that no one viewed any guys as "gay" back then. Just saying that those opinions tended toward guys who were overtly flamboyant - Elton, Rod, Bowie. It was obviously wrong in 2 of those 3 cases, but those are guys people thought were gay due to their images. Then you had Manilow and Mathis, who were gay but weren't flashy or flamboyant like those others. Those are the ones who might've showed signs that people didn't pick up on. I'd have to defer to older people to indicate what "signs" Mathis displayed, though. He always just seemed like a Perry Como or Andy Williams sort to me - not sure what about him pointed toward his sexual orientation...
It happens much more than people realize, the difference being that men are far less likely to admit to it, as many people still believe it's "unmasculine" for a man to have any kind of sexual contact with another man.
Some more thoughts on Wham!: I read a book about the history of MTV where Debbie Gibson talked about what a fan she was. When she first saw the "Go Go" video, she thought that everyone in it was a part of Wham, not just the background singers, but everyone in the audience. She thought it was cool that they were a 30-odd person band. Re: Andrew Ridgely, yes he seems even more disposable than John Oates is to Hall, but George Michael has said that in the early days, Ridgely was the confident, outgoing, photogenic one who was always trying to push them into the limelight. I don't know if he came from a higher-class background and had some of the connections, etc. but Michael has said that if it weren't for Ridgely's drive, they never would have made it.
Seems that this thread has turned into the National Enquirer, circa 1978. What is wrong with you people lol.
Yeah, it's really hard to say that coming out hurt Elton's career - he was definitely in a pronounced quality slump by the time that happened.
Elton talks about this a bit in his recent autobiography Me (which, by the way, is hilarious!). He notes that his album sales had fallen off before the Rolling Stone interview. He didn't seem overly concerned about the revelation - everyone in the business knew about it, and implies a variety of factors - drugs, changes in popular music (disco/punk), and taking a break from Bernie Taupin and his band to explore other songwriting partners and musical styles.
By November 1984, my friends and I had gone full Classic Rock, and derided most of the new pop songs on the charts. Many years later, I can now enjoy songs like "Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go" for what they are. Though "Purple Rain" should have hit #1 for at least a week!