George Michael – Listen Without Prejudice (1990)
George Michael – Patience (2004)
Both are severely underrated albums.
When I think of George Michael, I think of Faith (1987) and him getting busted in a Los Angeles park toilet. Sorry, but that’s where my mind goes (and the number of times I narrowly avoided a similar fate as a young man – DON’T ACT ALL SHOCKED AND SURPRISED, I never claimed to be an angel).
Faith is one of my go-to high fidelity recordings. By that I mean the recording itself—along with the performance—is the type of disc I would take to an audio salon to audition equipment. It’s intimate. It’s expansive. You can almost hear every breath as he sings.
But I realized today that his 1990 followup, Listen Without Prejudice shares many of those qualities. I find myself just getting lost in Cowboys and Angels. As we used to say, it just plays me.
Patience (2004) feels different from the other two, but it stands proudly on its own right—and retains the impeccable sonic qualities of its brethren. Amazing and Flawless (Go To The City) are two cuts that make we want to get up off my tired, sagging ass and dance.
1 comments
I have always felt that George Michael was an excellent vocalist. The man knew his way around a ballad.
I was in the military in the 80s and gay and straight men alike loved his music. I even had a straight friend, BI if he was drunk, hung like a horse, who tried to fashion himself after him.
I heard the story that Elton J. was disappointed that George did not perform more. Stating that George was a great vocalist and songwriter.
The music industry tried pushing George to all the women with hype, sexualized music and videos, but poor George was a screaming queen trying to survive both the gay and straight worlds. Sad really.