— Neil Tennant
With New Pop really starting to heat up, it's rather unexpected that some of Britain's major musical talents were nevertheless hiding in plain sight. This review of "Wham Rap!" was published the day before its chief composer, George Michael, turned nineteen. It wouldn't be long before his pop duo Wham! began to take off but it's of no little significance that one of the first people to recognize his musical gifts was a Smash Hits editor and critic named Neil Tennant. Perhaps the two most dominant forces of late-eighties' UK pop and one had released a little-known, little-heard debut single on an obscure label and the other had just given it his thumbs up in a top pop mag.
The future Pet Shop Boy wasn't the only one with praise for Wham!'s first single. While they would become an object of scorn for the much more serious inkies, Adrian Thrills of the NME is pleasantly surprised by them, who he describes as "one of the least jaded groups I have heard all year". He also detects an "uncontrived freshness" about them ("call it naivety if you will") and concludes that they are "one to watch on the side". "The best white rap poor money can buy," exclaims someone in the Melody Maker; a bit of a backhanded compliment but I'll let it slide. (On the other hand, Mike Gardner from the Record Mirror is less impressed, taking up his entire review with a short rant about how much his dislikes rap, especially in the hands of a group like Wham!)
Yet it's Tennant's review that resonates. "I'd be lost in admiration if I could find time to stand still" is the quotation I used the previous time I blogged about "Wham Rap!" but it applies much more this time round. Tennant's love for the song's irresistible dance-pop is evident but I have to wonder if the aspiring pop star in him wasn't also somewhat jealous. As stated above, Michael and Ridgely were both still in their teens and they had already cut such an impressive maiden single. Meanwhile, Tennant was nearly a decade older than the duo. He had spent the bulk of his free time in the seventies writing songs but it was only the previous summer that he met Chris Lowe, his longtime partner in Pet Shop Boys. Writing for Smash Hits may seem like a dream job to a particular contingent of sad types on social media — and I should know being one of them — but the modest compensation and having to interview and write about acts of dubious musical merit might have rubbed this pop genius the wrong way.
This raises an intriguing question: who should he have have felt jealousy towards, someone of genuine ability (like George Michael) or someone lacking in sufficient talents (like Bardo and Bucks Fizz, both also reviewed this fortnight by Tennant who is sympathetic towards both). Considering he admits to (almost) being "lost in admiration", he doesn't seem to be bitter and it could be argued that Michael's British raps triggered him into doing something not dissimilar, albeit in his own deadpanned and restrained style. Nevertheless, it must have gnawed at Tennant that others were thriving while he struggled — and it couldn't have helped that Hits colleagues like Mark Ellen considered his early musical efforts to be hopeless and felt that 'Pet Shop Boys' was a useless name for a band.
For George Michael's part, he may have failed the first time round to secure a hit but getting positive write-ups in Smash Hits, the NME and Melody Maker must have been encouraging. The fact that "Wham Rap!" was a teaser to a rap career that never happened is of little importance. Like other left-leaning acts who would eventually go unashamedly commercial in the coming years (Bananarama, Simply Red, UB-bloody-40), it's easy to overlook the fact that Wham! once had a certain hipster cred about them. With Duran Duran shooting promos in far flung exotic locales and Spandau Ballet dressed so as to get laid as much as humanly possible, is it any wonder that an energetic rap about unemployment and living life to its fullest caught the ear of so many. What's more surprising is that it was the critics who recognized something special well before the public had any similar inkling.
Being as young as they were, Michael and Ridgely may have been expected to head for the dole queue had this pop lark not worked out. Thatcherite Britain may have deemed the nation's millions of unemployed to be a burden but that was irrelevant to the existential hedonism that gives life to "Wham Rap!" Adrian Thrills, in his review mentioned above, admits as an aside that he thought that the "demolition of the work ethic was last year's thing" but Michael was smart to add a "Get stuffed! I'm going to enjoy myself either way" spirit. Knowing what we know now, however, is there more to lines like "I am a man, job or no job, you can't tell me that I'm not" and "I have a good time, with the boys that I meet down on the line..." than what we would have initially guessed?
A future superstar hadn't quite arrived but he was certainly on his way. Another one was lagging a bit he was taking inspiration from many of the bands he was been paid to interview and review — and he was even going to use his position to allow him to forge relationships with people who would help him get to the top. He was just going to have to wait a good deal longer than Wham!, a group who would be all but broken up by the time Pet Shop Boys were ready to hit the charts. Neil Tennant had been astute enough to see a budding pop genius in George Michael but when was someone going to recognize it in him?
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Also Reviewed This Fortnight
Brotherhood of Man: "Lightning Flash"
I've already mentioned Bucks Fizz and Bardo but Brotherhood of Man are yet another act present who add to the Eurovision flavour of this issue's singles review. (David Essex never had a Eurovision entry? Really?) ABBA were busy divorcing and about to go on a thirty-eight year hiatus but their influence on British pop was never greater than at this time when the two girls-two boys group dynamic was rapidly becoming the norm would quickly be replaced by the charismatic singer-surly keyboardist synth-pop template. (Gee, who could I be referring to?) To be precise, Brotherhood of Man (I can think of at least two things wrong with their name) had long been this way and likely would've had much the same career path had those Swedes never bothered to leave Scandinavia. I like this a little more than Tennant but I can give or take it at the end of the day. It could be suggested they were capable of better but is that really so?
(Click here to see my original review)
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