It’s easy to write Wham! off, even to this day, as another “embarrassing” 80s pop group. Their preppy, often neon attire, combined with Hair As Personality stylings also add to the present-day listener’s inability to take them seriously. And yet, even in their time and place—when they “made sense”—they were still regarded by critics as froth. Or, worse still, chaff. But that didn’t stop fans and casual radio listeners alike from turning up the volume whenever one of the duo’s songs came on. As they frequently did once the band finally “made it big.” And, compared to other British bands (The Beatles included), Wham! had a relatively “seamless” transition from high school boys to twenty-something megastars.
Maybe part of what made it feel so “natural” was that George Michael—born Georgios Panayiotou—and Andrew Ridgeley were friends for such a long time and shared the same dream of becoming musicians for equally as long, that it became unfathomable to think that life could turn out any other way. Director Chris Smith (known for other standout documentaries including Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond and Fyre) homes in on that friendship throughout Wham!, and how there would never have been a Wham! without that boyhood bond. Indeed, Michael himself is featured in the documentary stating, “I genuinely believe that there’s something predestined about it. I mean, the path might have been totally different had I sat down next to someone else that day.” That day being when George, age eleven, met Andrew, age twelve at Bushey Meads School in 1975. It became quickly apparent that their bond would be forged by music, with the voice of Ridgeley (for Smith goes the Asif Kapadia route in opting for voices and archival footage in lieu of talking heads for the documentary) remarking, “Essentially, Yog [Ridgeley’s affectionate nickname for George] and I saw things exactly the same way. Musically, we were joined at the hip.” A hip-joining that led them to start a ska band called The Executive that eventually “imploded,” leaving George and Andrew in the ruins—thus, demarcating them as the only two who were genuinely serious about “doing music” “as a career.”
By 1981, the formation of that career was taking shape in the form of going to Beat Route (get it?—a play on beetroot) in London’s West End. It was there that nightclub culture informed the sound and lyrical content of Wham!’s work. As Ridgeley notes, “The songwriting was dictated by our circumstances, the environment around us.” Not just one dominated by escaping onto the dance floor, but one dominated by recession, unemployment and the unshakeable onset of Thatcherism. So yes, even a band as “light” as Wham! was expressing the pain of life as a young man in Britain. A life that seemed to offer no future other than the factory line or the dole line. That, too, was the uniqueness of Wham!—it was so distinctly laddish. So geared toward ruffians and a “neo” kind of Teddy Boy. The very prototype that John Lennon imitated when he was first starting to navigate his musical identity. Like The Beatles, Wham!, for all its “male motifs” appeal, would end up attracting primarily women as fans. With Michael in particular becoming a “pinup,” despite his resistance toward such a label as it meant having to further bury his sexuality in the sand. This occurring early on in Wham!’s career, after Michael decided to come out to Shirlie Kemp (one of the “backup girls” in the band/Ridgeley’s girlfriend-turned-ex) and Ridgeley while staying a few extra days in Ibiza after shooting the video for “Club Tropicana.” Because of course Ibiza would facilitate that epiphany, that sense of freeness to finally admit to others who you are. Alas, Shirlie and Ridgeley advised Michael against coming out publicly because they were both more concerned about his oppressive father’s horrifying reaction than anyone or anything else. It was with that bum advice that Michael sealed off a key part of himself for decades to come.
For those who might have thought “Careless Whisper” was accordingly about some secret, forbidden love gone wrong, Wham! clears it up as being, quite simply, one of the first songs the duo recorded as Wham! As a matter of fact, the mention of “Careless Whisper” is interwoven throughout Wham!, almost like a recurring talisman…the way it has been in so many people’s lives. It was one of those songs that, just as A. B. Quintanilla writing Selena’s “Como La Flor,” kept building up over years of thinking about it. Michael confirms as much in Wham!, recounting, “We put it together very slowly, at home or on the bus, just add a little day by day.” Nonetheless, it wasn’t “really ready” until 1984, though Michael was struck with inspiration for the lyrics at just seventeen years old, while riding the bus to his job as an usher at a movie theater (thus, the verse, “Something in your eyes/Calls to mind a silver screen/And all its sad goodbyes”). Again, he was only seventeen when he wrote it. A song of such power and maturity. A song that would make all saxophone solos after it pale in comparison. A song that would set Ridgeley up for life as a result of receiving half the royalties.
But for all the flak Ridgeley gets about “riding coattails,” it has to be said that he was the main reason Wham! existed at all (or George Michael The Performer, for that matter). Were it not for his persistent harassment of a label cofounder for Innervision Records called Mark Dean, Wham! probably never would have gotten a record deal (even if it turned out to be a really shitty one, in terms of any sort of financial gain for the band’s success). Dean lived down the street from Ridgeley’s parents, and Ridgeley would phone Dean’s mom asking if her son had listened to the demo tape he put in their letterbox yet. When he finally did, Dean was impressed enough despite the lo-fi quality of it to sign the group to the label.
It’s here that Ridgeley stating, “There was only one thing that I ever wanted to do: be in a band with Yog” comes to mind. Because perhaps that’s why, once Ridgeley’s dream was fulfilled, it was all downhill from there (for his music career, at least). Complete with his raucous, party animal reputation that resulted in the tabloid nicknames “Animal Andy” and Randy Andy.” But it was a tabloid frenzy that suited Michael well, for it meant no one could call attention to his own seemingly total lack of a sexual appetite…for women, that is. Even if the telltale clues were always there, plain as day. Just look at a double entendre-y lyric such as, “I choose to cruise.” Not to mention the entire contents of “Nothing Looks the Same in the Light,” a song Michael wrote about the first time he realized he wanted to stay in bed with a man for the night.
Not being able to be honest about who he was caused an undeniable depression. It was likely for this reason that Michael retreated further into the protection of Wham!’s “effervescent” and “exuberant” aura. Fun and “escapism” being the core tenets of what Wham! was all about. It’s possible Michael was afraid to lose a protective shield like that (even though many probably thought Ridgeley needed Wham! more than Michael). For, unlike most bands that start out at a certain age, therefore represent/are forever associated with that certain age, Wham! knew from the outset that it was ultimately a finite project. That there was, inevitably, an expiration date on what they represented—fun, froth and frivolity—once they aged out of the very demographic they were appealing to. The same thing technically happened to The Beatles after 1965 (once Beatlemania had crested), but they chose to reanimate into a “Part Deux” of themselves, replete with psychedelia and Eastern-influenced lyrics and rhythms.
Wham! was never going to bother with a Part Deux of themselves, which is why it was so important to them to “make it big” in their teens/early twenties. “Youth” was their brand. And, in contrast to The Beatles, they weren’t shy about their affinity for pop (The Beatles, instead, wanted to be categorically “rock n’ roll”). As both Michael and Ridgeley exhibited, pop was never froth, not fundamentally. In that sense, one might say they were doing “purposeful pop” long before Katy Perry decided to on Witness. Because, in defiance of most Brits, Michael and Ridgeley weren’t snobbish about the genre. Indeed, willfully chose it (they “chose life,” if you will) over something like the ska and punk genres that dominated their sound when they were in The Executive.
A pop song could say so much more than any treatise or political speech. And “Wham Rap!” did just that, with an opening that goes, “Wham! bam!/I am! a man!/Job or no job,/You can’t tell me that I’m not./Do! you!/Enjoy what you do?/If not, just stop!/Don’t stay there and rot!” It was advice, in the end, that would apply to the dissolution of Wham! But that doesn’t come until the end of the documentary. In the meantime, the criticism they endure for shifting from “socially aware” content to something like “Club Tropicana”—which marked the true essence of the band—is addressed. Reviews from the British press were merciless, including assessments such as, “The work is futile, the thought is shallow…” Yet there was nothing futile, shallow or thoughtless about Michael and Ridgeley catering to what their own peers wanted. Knowing full well what would make hearts and pulses alike flutter. As Michael explained to one interviewer back in the day, “I think what’s happening in England is that there’s a large escapist element creeping back into music now. Three or four years ago with the punk thing, people were shouting. Now, they’re not ashamed of being young, unemployed. They’d rather just go to a disco or a club and forget about it.” Wham!, in that regard, was anything but frivolous, even if they were catering to those who wanted to be frivolous.
Having a keen social awareness of their time and place, Wham! embodied the 80s not just for their vibrantly-colored sportswear and hairstyles that required a blow dryer, but because they knew beneath the so-called froth of it all was a dark, unpleasant reality—neoliberalism held up as a god, racism, AIDS, war, famine. So why not just escape for the four-minute length of a pop song? Why not just have a good time while you could, whenever you could grab it? Something only a pop song is capable of furnishing on a socialistic level. Nothing about that is frivolous, yet pop music continues to be lambasted for having no value when, in truth, it remains one of the few pure modern comforts we have in a world of cold, hard reality.
To many, Wham! will never be a band “of substance.” Or, if it is, then only if the duo is being sardonically pontificated upon by yuppies like Patrick Bateman (indeed, how did Bret Easton Ellis choose not to include a discourse on Make It Big from Bateman at some point in American Psycho?). But to those who understand that the presence of pop music in our culture is the best way to check its pulse (and if it even still has one), Wham! was a symbol of one of the most vital times in music, reflecting the youth back to itself before it was forced into the kind of situation “Wham Rap!” and “Young Guns” warned about.
With a run time of about one hour and thirty minutes, the Wham! documentary feels as short-lived as the band’s five-ish years of recording together. And likewise, it’s just as impactful despite its shortness.
