{"id":25195,"date":"2016-12-28T13:22:32","date_gmt":"2016-12-28T13:22:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/essentiallypop.com\/epop\/?p=25195"},"modified":"2016-12-28T13:24:54","modified_gmt":"2016-12-28T13:24:54","slug":"george-michael","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/essentiallypop.com\/epop\/2016\/12\/george-michael\/","title":{"rendered":"George Michael"},"content":{"rendered":"

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They say the music you listen to as a teenager remains with you for the rest of your life, and that’s certainly true in my case, growing up in the 1980s in Australia, where my entire life was turned upside down by the so-called “British Invasion”.<\/strong><\/h4>\n

Regular readers would know that my teen years were dominated by David Bowie, whose obituary I\u00a0had heartbreakingly to write at the start of this year. Now I have the almost equally sad duty of writing about the death of George Michael.\u00a0I would be lying if I said that I was a huge fan of George as a teenager. My friends\u00a0all loved him, while I however preferred his bandmate, Andrew Ridgeley. Nonetheless, the music of Wham!\u00a0– and George’s subsequent solo releases\u00a0– had a lasting impact with the opening chords of many of those songs taking me instantly back to my teens and early twenties.<\/p>\n

The news therefore of George Michael’s\u00a0death on Christmas Day shook me. Only that morning my family had, as one of our traditions, listened to my seasonal\u00a0YouTube Playlist, which includes Wham!’s ‘Last Christmas’, and Band Aid’s ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas?’.\u00a0While watching the latter, we commented as we saw\u00a0Status Quo’s Rick Parfitt, who himself died on Christmas Eve, that every year there would be less and less people still alive from that group. Never did I expect that there would be one less even that day. I want to put a ring fence around the remaining.<\/p>\n

George Michael\u00a0was only 53 when he died, and yet he lived a more full life both in the public eye and in private than most of us will if we live for a hundred years.\u00a0Quite apart from being a supremely talented singer and songwriter, he was a very funny man who could quite as easily have gone into acting if it had been his wish. His cameo performances with James Corden for Comic Relief, and with Ricky Gervais in ‘Extras’ are just two examples:<\/p>\n

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