— Mark Frith
Panayiotou v. Sony Music was a legal dispute that would become, in retrospect, the beginning of the end for George Michael as a pop star. Sales of his second album Listen Without Prejudice Vol.1 had been disappointing after the blockbuster success of solo debut Faith and the singer argued that his record label hadn't promoted it well enough. Where mogul David Geffen had once taken Neil Young to court for putting out "uncharacteristic" music, now a major pop star was suing his record label for not having his back. Strange days indeed.
Even if Sony/CBS/Columbia/Epic (or whatever they were calling themselves at the time) had been negligent it wasn't as if George himself was doing the promo rounds himself. Having been everywhere for much of 1987 and '88 (as well as being prominent over the previous four years as a member of Wham!), he decided to take a step back. He famously refused to appear in the videos for Listen's singles, he shied away from interviews and seemed content to let the music he was putting out speak for itself — hence the album's title. If the public had become tired of him during the eighties, he was doing everything he could to make sure that overexposure wasn't going to be a problem in the nineties.
Listen Without Prejudice did sell as well as its predecessor but creatively it was streets ahead of Faith. Loaded with hits, his debut lacked consistency and it had been padded out with a bit of filler. The album sold like mad around the world with it also producing six hit singles of varying quality ("Monkey", the weakest track on the album, somehow managed to get to number one in the US but it wasn't even deemed good enough to make the cut for his 1998 double disc greatest hits collection). He had entered Michael Jackson-Madonna-Prince levels of fame and then chose to walk away from it. His work in 1990 is a reflection of this. Normally, pop stars who go all serious end up losing something along the way; George Michael wasn't like normal pop stars.
"Praying for Time" just had to be a hit single. Follow-ups "Freedom '90" and "Waiting for the Day" each did their part in the promotional game. But once those three records were out of the way there wasn't much else on Listen Without Prejudice worth bothering with, at least in terms of chart potential. In truth, there didn't need to be any singles released off of it, a practice I suspect he would have been open to. For their part, British fans seemed happier just buying the album: debuting at number one the previous September, it wandered around the charts for several months, enjoying a bit of a revival at about the same time that "Heal the Pain" wasn't exactly killing it on the Top 40. Singles were becoming a tool to sell more albums.
I hope that many people bought Listen upon hearing "Heal the Pain". While not suggesting anything like a hit, it probably represented the LP better than the two previous (faster-paced) records that preceded it. Like this one? There are plenty more deep cuts just like it. While chart placings like 23, 28, 31 and 45 (the brilliant "Cowboys and Angels" had even less business being issued as a single) are underwhelming for someone who used to put out a string a of guaranteed Top 10 smashes, George Michael had become an albums artist — it's just too bad he didn't put out all that many albums from this point on.
Reviewer Mark Frith seems to be on the defensive as he praises "Heal the Pain". There was the feeling at the time that Michael had become pretentious. Robert Smith spent the bulk of his review of "Waiting for the Day" the previous October trashing him as "offensive" and a "charlatan" (which only makes me wish that he had recorded with Tim Burgess). Frith foresees listeners concluding that he had become the "most boring person in the universe" but that could just as easily have been the case with Faith singles "One More Try" and "Kissing a Fool".
In light of the next (and, sadly, last) quarter century of George Michael's life, "Heal the Pain" takes on a whole new dimension. Rather than pledging to be the one to make it all right, it's inevitable that one hears it as he being the one whose pain is in need of healing. A simple cut-and-paste job of the lyrics lends a whole new poignancy to the song's message: "you tell me you're cold on the inside", "he must have really hurt you" and "who needs a lover that can't be a friend" become heartbreaking when you become aware of Michael's own inner turmoil. Had he actually been communicating to the "woman of his dreams" (are you sure about that, Mark?) then he certainly would have been laying it on thick; but as a message to himself, it only feels like more of a cry for help. Great a song though it certainly is, it isn't the easiest listen in the world.
Michael would lose his suit against Sony and the case did him no favours in the public eye as well. Describing his situation as "professional slavery" didn't get him much sympathy from those of us without multi-million dollar recording contracts. The man had already been a bit of a recluse but now he wasn't even putting out new music. He may have been unsatisfied with how Listen Without Prejudice had been handled but it was probably the only time that he managed to strike a balance between fulfilling his duties as a pop god while not allowing his status to overtake him. I just hope he managed to heal some of his pain as the years slipped by.
~~~~~
Also Reviewed This Fortnight
The Railway Children: "Every Beat of the Heart"
Previously reviewed in ver Hits just shy of a year earlier (and already covered in this space back in May; what can I say, I'm a huge sucker for this one). In the interim, "Every Beat of the Heart" only just managed to crawl into the Top 75 but then somehow found its way at the top of the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks (now Alternative Airplay) chart in the US while subsequent singles from album Native Place stiffed back home. But it had been granted a second chance here in the early part of '91 and it wasn't going to piss the opportunity away this time. Top 30! Top 25 even! (The Top 25 is a thing, right? Right?) A well-deserved hit at last! And it's still glorious. Once again, it got jobbed out of the Single of the Fortnight but I'll take any opportunity to just to remind myself that those horrible teenage years of mine had their moments.
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