George Michael: "Heal the Pain"

6 February 1991

"She better watch out for that stubble though, it could be a mite prickly."

— 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.

Gloria Estefan: "Here We Are"

21 February 1990

"As usual her "man" is being a rotter, as usual she loves him regardless and as usual there are tinkling pianos and fluttering Spanish guitars galore rustling in the shrubbery."

— Chris Heath

Blimey, 1990 was off to a slow start. The decade has so far seen some awfully poor Singles of the Fortnight but at least the charts were every bit as subpar. Christmas number one holdover "Do They Know It's Christmas?" by Band Aid II was the first chart topper of the year and it was followed by the equally awful "Hangin' Tough" by New Kids on the Block. Next was Kylie Minogue's very unremarkable version of Little Anthony & The Imperials "Tears on My Pillow", which was better than its number one successors but not much. It lasted just a week on top and was replaced by a single so brilliant that it ended up turning the whole year around.

Unfortunately, Sinead O'Connor's "Nothing Compares 2 U" ended up being passed over for a Smash Hits SOTF even though it was a bona fide Single of the Decade for a ten year period that was just two months' old. Scan old issues of ver Hits from the time and you'll discover that not only was it not reviewed but it wasn't even included in the Also Released This Fortnight consolation category.  And yet, it still spent four weeks at number one and ended up being a worldwide smash — and it has aged beautifully even if the rest of us haven't.

Less endearing today is Chris Heath's pick for this issue's SOTF, "Here We Are" by Gloria Estefan. He admits this isn't exactly the strongest batch of new releases so his choice is by default. His write up isn't even glowing with his nibs using an awful lot of 'as usuals'. And who can blame him? Gloria and her longstanding Miami Sound Machine — whether acknowledged or not they were still present — crew had long since settled on a formula of going back-and-forth between slushy love songs and dancefloor numbers about how the best thing one can do is get on that dancefloor pronto.

Critic Tom Breihan has described Estefan as "America's most successful wedding singer" and it's hard to disagree. "Anything for You", "Can't Stay Away From You" and "Don't Wanna Lose You" are just the sort of songs You might want to have Your first dance to with Your new spouse (no one I know personally, mind you); the likes of "Conga", "1-2-3" and "Get on Your Feet" could all encourage grannies and kiddies and friends of your parents to get dancing while everyone else goes straight to the open bar.

"Here We Are" was the third single from Estefan's first solo album Cuts Both Ways. Torch song "Don't Wanna Lose You" came out first in the summer of 1989 and it was followed by the uptempo "Get on Your Feet" in the US and "Oye Mi Canto" in Britain. So far, so adequate. None of these songs was about to blow anyone away but they were all sturdy enough records that weren't about to get people running from the room in terror. For the most part, the album as a whole was quite good too. Predecessor LP Anything for You (known as Let It Loose in North America) may have had the stronger singles (I still like "1-2-3") but Cuts Both Ways was the stronger record from top to bottom. The three singles spread over various territories amounted to the decent material that could be siphoned off Estefan's album but such thinking never occurred to record company execs.

It was vastly inferior to "Don't Wanna Lose You" but you could always rely on a gloopy Gloria number to be a big hit, though not for much longer. "Here We Are" did well in the US but people were beginning to tire of all these so-called ballads that all sounded the same. Anything for You had been a slow burn in the UK and it's four singles did well on the back of it; Cuts Both Ways sold really well right away and its 45's suffered as a result. A year earlier "Here We Are" might've been a Top 10 hit but in 1990 it drifted around the lower half of the Top 40 for a month and was quickly forgotten about. Even the news that she'd been seriously injured when her tour bus got crushed on March 20 couldn't save this very ordinary recording.

Estefan recuperated from spinal surgery over the next year and the world seemed to move on. I had started 1990 off by playing Cuts Both Ways to death but the Pet Shop Boys, Depeche Mode and Madchester taken over and by the end of the year I had outgrown this music that was so painfully adult. I wasn't terribly impressed by her 1991 comeback "Coming Out of the Dark" and I'm not so sure it was just because I had moved on. It was too inspirational and too calculated. I would later have my own brush with death in 2002 and I listened a lot to Stevie Wonder's Fulfillingness' First Finale at that time. An account of dealing with his own mortality, it was (and remains) poignant and relatable. Listening to it made me think of how poorly Gloria Estefan handled such weighty material. We all got sick of her because her stuff all sounded the same but then we wanted her to go back to sounding the same when she tried to be serious. Some people just can't win.

~~~~~

Also Reviewed This Fortnight

The Railway Children: "Every Beat of the Heart"

The one Heath ought to have picked. He likes it for the most part but then dampens his praise by stating that the tune is "nicked from an old New Order song". That might well be true but I find it's just generally inspired by NO, not cribbed from one number in particular. The bass part is straight out of the Peter Hook Book of Bass Playing for Lead Guitarists but much of the rest is just good old, highly irresistible jangle pop. Heath also mentions Del Amitri as a not dissimilar group but I'll take the melancholy of lead Railway Child Gary Newby any day. Proof of what a sucker I am for depressing songs that also manage to be uplifting. A superb single then, now and always — and a sign that sweet indie pop was back (BACK!!).