“Terrifying”: George Michael on the artist who made songs no one wants to hear

Posted On December 22, 2024December 22, 2024

Rock and roll has never shied away from taboo subjects. For as long as the genre has existed, musicians have been willing to push the envelope and say things that might get them in hot water, whether that’s Mick Jagger’s snarl on ‘Satisfaction’ or the drug trips in half of the Grateful Dead’s songbook. For George Michael, though, there are pieces in one band’s discography that will cause more than a few people to wince even today.

Michael was never that kind of controversial pop star, though. He had one of the biggest when working in Wham!, and despite having a few moments where things didn’t come together, half of their best material was about having the same squeaky clean image that existed with every teen idol, whether that was The Beatles or David Cassidy.

That’s not to say that Michael himself wasn’t averse to listening to some interesting alternative music. Even in his prime, he was talking up his praise for artists like Joy Division for laying down the darkest songs known to man, so it wasn’t like he was afraid to tell everyone about the strange music that was on the fringes of society.

Even for the time, though, Pet Shop Boys were a bit much for some fans to take in. Outside of the homophobic crowd that probably still hiss whenever someone explores a non-heterosexual relationship in a public sphere, Neil Tennant was always interested in digging deeper into music beyond the typical silly love song.

And for a gay man growing up in the 1980s, it’s not like there wasn’t a wealth of material to draw from once the AIDs epidemic started to sweep across the world. Since it was still being looked at as “the gay disease” by many uncultured philistines, Tennant was putting those issues front and centre in his music, usually making sure that everyone knew the problems that came with being a gay man and trying to find love in a world that is sexually dangerous and one where a portion of the population opens hates him for being who he was.

Since Michael wasn’t yet out of the closet, he marvelled at the bravery that Tennant had when he first started writing those songs, recalling in 2007, “Neil Tennant, at a certain point in the 80s, was writing the most beautiful songs no one wants to hear. Frightening, terrifying songs about AIDS. But they do if they’re gay and they’ve lost friends. They do want to hear those people referred to and remembered and honoured. And I think some of Neil’s work did that.”

And for anyone who bothered to take their blinders off for a few seconds back then, it’s easy to see what Tennant was getting at on tunes like ‘Being Boring’. Even if it happened to be a relationship between two men, many of Tennant’s best material from around this time had to do with people who had a genuine connection with each other and the heartache that comes with knowing that they will never see each other again.

While Michael kept everything fairly close to the chest in terms of his sexuality, hearing Pet Shop Boys was a way for him to stand in solidarity with those who had lost their loved ones to AIDs. It might not be the easiest subject matter to talk about, but Tennant was fearless whenever it came time to talk about his problems.

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