The new documentary about George Michael, Andrew Ridgeley and the music they made as Wham! - is simply called "Wham!" — found me in a moment of need for a fantastical, nostalgic elixir, something short and sweet and tangential to my national blues sentiment. On one hand, Wham! the duo made soul music that exploded. And the movie glosses over all the thorny moral and ethical issues of white people doing black things. Those questions don't exist at all in this movie. That is the fantasy. And I'm here for that. But also: Boom! it had no thorns.
They were two white boys from England of strong Greek Cypriot (George) and Egyptian (Andrew) ancestry, born during the rise of Motown in the early 1960s and bonded as teens as disco passed the baton. party to the new wave and rap. . They synthesized it all (plus a bit of Barry Manilow and Freddie Mercury, and some Billy Joel) into a genre whose only other alchemists, really, were Hall and Oates.
Director: Chris Smith
Stars: George Michael, Andrew Ridgeley, Wham!
There aren't even talking heads. The disembodied voices of Michael and Ridgeley guide everything: reflection and memory as narrative. (Most of Michael comes from a BBC Radio interview.) They explain how they met as kids at school in the mid-1970s and took over a mini block of 1980s culture. You get to hear Ridgeley still affectionately calling Michael by his nickname, Yog, as he was born Georgios Kyriacos Panayiotou, and seeing the looks of both, from the leather bar to Richard Simmons.
Nothing here is overthought or pumped up. To invoke the words of a different beacon of appeal, "Wham!" It's a teenage dream. You could drink it out of a coconut. You're allowed to embrace Michael's dexterous approach to black music and Ridgeley's suave interpretation of Michael's plan as the way things could be. Easy, without friction. You hear Michael rhyme in “Wham! Rap” almost as wonderfully as Grandmaster Flash or with some Kurtis Blow humor, and no cold sweats. The task had clearly been done. So instead you say: He just...had it.
I mean, the early 1980s were awash with young white Brits making hits, at least partially, outside of Motown: ABC, Bananarama, Duran Duran, Eurythmics, Soft Cell. I would say that sound came more naturally to Michael; it seemed to him most elastic. He really he could make the most of a "do do do do" or a "yeah yeah." He had a knack for tattoo melodies and chord progressions so juicy you want to bite into every section of almost every song.
Michael soon learned how to tone his singing. He could make her coo and moan and whisper; Ridgeley, played feisty, flirtatious, button-down guitar, an element I can now hear (and thanks to this film, appreciate). They made three albums in as many years, then stopped when the costs of fame became too high for Ridgeley, but barely lived up to Michael's expectations. Wham, for Michael, it was the ground floor. To listen to both men, he was the stronger songwriter and really knew how to produce a record.
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