The Hottest Hit On The Planet:
“Careless Whisper” by George Michael
Imagine being George Michael in 1984.
One minute you’re dropping “Wake Me Up Before You Go Go”, a song so aggressively fun that even you describe it as a bit “naff”, the next you are bringing “Careless Whisper”, and the profoundly poetic image of “guilty feet” having “no rhythm,” into the world. Those two songs are polar opposites! One is kids’ stuff, the other an extremely grown-up take on the complexities of adult relationships.
Has any other artist matured as fast as George did when he released those two songs – Wham! Bam! – one after the other?
By way of comparison, it took The Beatles about five years to get from “Love Me Do” to “Sgt Pepper’s.”
George made his leap in close to five weeks!
Okay, maybe “Careless Whisper” is not quite “Sgt Peppers”… maybe it’s “Yesterday.” But that still took The Beatles three years. George did it in a single leap! In Australia the two songs were practically back-to-back Number Ones, just one week separating almost novelty-song “WMUBYGG” falling from the Number One possie and “Careless Whisper” rising to the top. That week being taken up by Tina Turner’s “What’s Love Got To Do With It” (it’s a 7)
What’s more: “Careless Whisper” had been written years earlier.
“Careless Whisper” was included on the same demo tape as “Wham! Rap.”
Which means that George was sitting on “Careless Whisper” for years, deciding instead to fire frivolous party bombs like “Club Tropicana” onto the world.
Maybe George was biding his time. Waiting for the world to be ready. Waiting for the moment when people might accept the idea of George Michael as a quiet storm soul singer. Quite whether immediately after “Wake Me Up Before You Go Go” was the best time for such a project I’m not sure, but that’s why he’s George Michael and I’m very much not. Also, because he was so much better looking than I am.
Or maybe George sat on “Careless Whisper” for so long because he didn’t really like it all that much?
“It’s sad because that song means so much to so many people. It disappoints me that you can write a lyric very flippantly—and not a particularly good lyric—and it can mean so much to so many people. That’s disillusioning for a writer.”
What a sourpuss.
George also said he was “fed up” with the song; that he “wrote it when (he) was 17 and didn’t know much about anything.” He even had a theory as to why so many people love the song: because so many people have cheated.
It’s sad that George felt that way. It’s disillusioning as a listener to find that “guilty feet have got no rhythm” was written as a flippant (a “very flippant”) lyric, and not that George had discovered a key insight into the human condition.
So “Careless Whisper” was written when George was 17 and didn’t know much about anything.
But he did know about cheating. George was cheating on his girlfriend – Helen – with a girl he’d had a crush on a few years earlier – Jane – back when he used to watch her glide around the skating rink, entranced by how pretty she was.
Back then, in their skating rink days, Jane hadn’t given George the time of day. It’s possible that George never even talked to her.
This is because George had been a fat kid with glasses and his nickname had been Yog.
But now Yog had a band. Not Wham! but his pre-Wham! band, Executive, and they were playing school discos. Now that Yog was kind of cool, Jane decided that she liked him. And because Jane was, like, super-popular, she invited Yog to all the cool kid parties! Yog got so carried away with his new cool status that when he eventually broke up with Helen, he started cheating on Jane with a whole other girl! Yog was out of control!!!
Yog started to worry that his two girlfriends would find out about each other. But – incredibly – they never did. Andrew never whispered carelessly.
Andrew was a good friend.
Yog’s sisters, on the other hand, were not happy about the situation. Yog’s sisters liked Helen. They might snitch on Yog. It was a conundrum. The only solution Yog could think of was to break-up with Helen, which is what he proceeded to do. And then he wrote a song about it.
Given such a soap-opera of a backstory, it’s only appropriate that “Careless Whisper” – and particularly that saxophone intro – sounds as though it could have been the theme song to an 80s soap opera.
I’ve also heard it being said that telenovelas – or at least one telenovela – would play the saxophone riff of “Careless Whisper” whenever a gay character entered a room.
Even the video’s establishing-shot – of the Miami skyline at night – looks as though it could be from a soap opera… I half expected the words “Careless Whisper” to jump out of the screen, in pink and green italics.
“Careless Whisper” is more than a soap-opera. It’s practically a movie:
Gradually working its way up to its emotional climax – “tonight the music feeeelllls so loud!!” – in the third quarter, before drifting off into a long drawn-out outro:
Perfect for George to gaze off into the distance, sadly musing over what might have been, wallowing in the loneliness-hole that he has dug for himself. It’s an epic five-minute emotional rollercoaster ride of regret.
The success of “Careless Whisper” did not come as a surprise to George. He had been telling everyone, at the beginning of 1984, that he would have four UK Number Ones by the end of the year. He ended up having three.
The next one, “Freedom,” becoming, in George’s mind, something of his theme song.
Or at least it’s the song he liked to reference every time he wanted critics and the public to take him seriously. There’s the church organ playing its refrain at the beginning of “Faith.” There’s his reprise of the title itself on “Freedom ’90.” George Michael very clearly wanted freedom, but not this time. George doesn’t want your freedom. Part time love just brings him down. DOO! DO!! DO!!!
Here’s the video for “Freedom,” including a long intro of George and Andrew discussing their tour of China. Wham!s April 1985 tour of China – playing to 12,000 at the Worker’s Gymnasium with tickets costing $1.75 – was a big deal. They were the first Western pop group allowed into the country.
Quite why the Chinese Communist Party decided they wanted to invite a Western pop group into the country, I’m not sure. But we do know why they chose Wham! It wasn’t because they were the biggest pop group in the Western world, although they very much almost were. Wham! got the gig because their manager – Simon Napier Bell – had sabotaged a competing campaign being conducted by Queen.
Simon sent the organizers two brochures, one featuring George Michael looking cute and cuddly, and the other featuring Freddie Mercury, presumedly featuring stills from “I Want To Break Free” (I tried to find a copy of the two brochures but had no luck). (“I Want To Break Free” is a 7)
George looked like the safer option. They still made him sign a contract however, promising that he wouldn’t gyrate his hips, just to be on the safe side.
Wham!’s tour of China was a big historical event, and didn’t George know it? “We were not only representing pop music” George said in the video “we were also representing the youth of the Western world.” If that seems a little egotistical, it’s nothing compared to what they said in a speech to the Chinese Youth Federation:
“We just hope our performance will represent a cultural introducing between young people here and in The West and help them see what goes on in the rest of the world.
And I think I speak for everyone when I say this may be a small step for Wham! but a great step for the youth of the world!”
It’s not the flippin’ moon landing, George!
- “Freedom,” quite possibly the best Motown-pastiche of the 80s, is a 9.
- “Careless Whisper” is also a 9!
Meanwhile, in Chaka-Chaka-Chaka-Chaka Land:
“I Feel For You” by Chaka Khan
You know who else didn’t like their big hit? Chaka, Chaka, Chaka, Chaka Khan!
Chaka Khan did not like “I Feel For You.” Chaka Khan hated “I Feel For You”! Chaka Khan thought that “I Feel For You” was “the pits.”
Chaka Khan was wrong.
WHAT WAS CHAKA’S PROBLEM?
Let’s explore!
Here’s an advertisement that was published in Smash Hits to promote “I Feel For You.” Look at that All Star Cast!!!
It gives you a pretty good indication of just how much is going on in “I Feel For You.” Which is “a lot.” “A lot” is going on. “A lot” to like. “A lot”, apparently, for Chaka to hate.
Let’s go through these ingredients-one-by-one. Obviously, Chaka had no problem with her “incredible voice.”
“Singing is so exciting” Chaka told Record Mirror at about this time, “it’s nearly as good as sex. I really shouldn’t say this but when I come off stage my pants are wet because I get so excited.” Chaka absolutely killed “I Feel For You” with her “incredible voice.” Were her pants wet by the end of it? I wouldn’t be surprised.
Now let’s skip to the bottom of that list, to Arif Mardin, probably the only name on there that might draw a blank.
Arif was a Turkish producer who had worked on a lot of jazzy, soulful and sometimes folksy records. Also a lot of Bette Midler. And a whole bunch of pop classics: For example:
- “Son Of A Preacher Man” for example.
- Average White Band’s “Pick Up The Pieces.”
- Bee Gees “Jive Talking.”
And Chaka’s “I’m Every Woman” (it’s a 9.)
Arif is the one that ought to be thanked for “I Feel For You.” Or, if you are of Chaka’s disposition, blamed.
Now let’s skip back to the top… “Take a song by Prince…”
A song called “I Feel 4 U.” It was “I Feel For You” not “Feel 4 U,” because, when he wrote the song in 1979, Prince wasn’t doing that shit yet. Ironically, Prince was beginning to do that shit in 1984, so that may have been a bit confusing for his fans.
The original version by Prince is a good, catchy pop song. But compared to everything he’d be doing about a year later, and for decades to come, it just feels like a demo. Even compared to the big hit single from the same self-titled album – that hit single being “I Wanna Be Your Lover” (it’s a 9) – it feels like a demo. (Prince’s version of “I Feel For You” is a 6)
Curiously enough, Chaka had originally met Prince about the same time as he wrote “I Feel For You,” at which time she considered him “an insignificant little dude.” That opinion may have been largely due to the conditions under which they met.
Like any sensible person, Prince was obsessed with Chaka Khan, and he wanted to meet her.
But he wasn’t exactly famous yet, so he couldn’t just call her up saying “Hey, this is Prince.” So he came up with a devious scheme; he’d call her up and pretend to be Sly Stone!
Prince had heard that Chaka and Sly were friends, although presumedly not good enough friends that Chaka couldn’t tell it wasn’t actually Sly on the phone. In her defense, Chaka claims that Prince absolutely nailed his Sly Stone impersonation.
Given how much else Prince took from Sly – his rock-funk-fusion sound, his utopian vision of leading a band featuring all available races and genders, his fashion sense, particularly during the “Sign O’ The Times”/“Lovesexy” era – this should be no surprise.
So Prince – playing the role of Sly – asks Chaka to meet him at Electric Lady studios, and Chaka, thinking it’s Sly, gets in her limousine – presumedly – and goes, “Where’s Sly?”
Chaka asks when she arrives, frustrated that she has gone to all the trouble of going down to Electric Lady studios only to find “an insignificant little dude” there. Chaka was mad.
But now it was 1984, and Chaka was no longer mad at Prince. Also, Chaka needed a hit. Chaka had been spending half a decade “going into the studio really working at creating masterpieces, mixing jazz and rock and funk”, but all that was selling squat, and the label was demanding hits.
That’s why Chaka and Arif were listening to old Prince deep-cuts. Because Prince was the hottest thing around, so maybe one of his before-he-was-famous tracks could become a hit. Hey, it had worked for Cyndi Lauper!
It’s not as though Chaka had been totally hitless due to her obsession with recording jazz and rock and funk masterpieces:
Rufus and Chaka had dropped “Ain’t Nobody” about a year earlier, a track so funky they threatened to give it to Michael Jackson for Thriller if the record company refused to release it as a single (“Ain’t Nobody” is a 9). It ended up featuring on Breakin’, the movie that made break-dancing famous.
Now that Chaka and breakdancing were intertwined, there was no-way “I Feel For You” was not going to feature a “little rap.” I do like that description: “a little rap by Grandmaster Melle Mel.” Because if that rap is anything, it’s “little.”
Now, Melle Mel was, at the time, probably the most famous rapper on Earth, although both Run and DMC were coming up fast behind.
Melle Mel was famous for rapping on “The Message,” and also for “White Lines,” an anti-drug song that – or so legend has it – Melle recorded whilst hopped up on cocaine. It certainly sounds like the recording of someone who likes drugs way more than they are letting on (“White Lines” is an 8.)
Now, a Chaka song about feeling for you is no place for rhymes about cocaine and how it’s like a jungle sometimes it makes Melle Mel wonder how he keeps from going under… so Melle was instructed to rap only G-rated raps, about how much he loved Chaka.
“I wanna love you, wanna hug you, wanna squeeze you, too”: Melle Mel kept to the brief.
That’s Melle Mel’s voice on the Chaka-stutter, although the actual stuttering came from Arif’s hand slipping and accidentally pressing the repeat button, making it sound like a lawnmower starting up. That, more than anything, is probably what made Chaka so mad. That, and the fact that, like so many other people who had built their careers on being able to actually sing, Chaka hated rap.
After complaining – to Smash Hits – that nobody cared about her jazz/rock/funk masterpieces, Chaka continued: “so now I do this song and put rapping on it to boot, which is really the pits. The lowest thing you can do from an artist’s standpoint.”
Chaka was saying that sort of shit about the rap even before every second person she met made a joke about it… – “Pleasure to meet you, Chaka, Chaka, Chaka…” – for the rest of her life!
And honestly, if I ever met Chaka Khan, I probably wouldn’t be able to help myself either.
Worse still, Arif had put the rap in there without telling her.
Arif was doing everything he could to make this thing a hit.
And don’t think that Arif didn’t know that Chaka was going to be pissed about the rap. When she arrived at the studio the next day he met her at the door: “I’ve done something to the song,” he apologized.
Arif did a lot of things to the song.
Arif got Stevie Wonder into the studio for a harmonica solo, just as he was on his way to Marvin Gaye’s funeral. The fact that Stevie Wonder can just bust out a joyous harmonica solo on his way to Marvin Gaye’s funeral is mind-blowing. In case that wasn’t enough Stevie, they sampled Little Stevie, his first hit “Fingertips (Part 1)”, the bit where Little Stevie goes “EVERYBODY SAY YEAH!!!!” and the crowd goes wild!
Chaka was probably fine with the harmonica solo. I’m not sure where she stands on sampling, but honestly, the moment when Chaka goes “WOAHWOAHWOAHWOOAAAHHH!!!” and 80s Stevie plays a harmonica solo, whilst 60s Stevie makes the crowd go wild… it feels as though Arif has accidently created an apocalypse-inducing time-travel paradox, and if that’s the way the world ends, then I’d be totally fine with that because what a way to go!
The feeling that I’ve got for “I Feel For You” baby, it makes me wanna sing… that it’s a 10.
Meanwhile, in Boomer Land:
“The Boys Of Summer”
by Don Henley
Don Henley saw a Deadhead sticker on a Cadillac.
A 1979 Cadillac Seville, to be precise. This appears to have troubled him.
Don Henley seemed to worry about his generation – the Baby Boomers – more than most people. About how they were supposed to be the generation that had figured everything out.
The generation that had dropped out of corporate suburban society, shunned materialism, solved racism and ended all wars… but now look at them! They were driving 1979 Cadillac Sevilles, described by Don as “the status symbol of the right-wing upper-middle-class American bourgeoisie.” Those are some fancy words, Don.
Sometimes when talking about the 1979 Cadillac Seville, Don even quotes its retail price: $21,000. Don Henley does his research.
“Don’t look back, you can never look back”… this feels like familiar territory for Don… hasn’t he sung about this before? On some famous song? What song was that?
The one about how you can check out anytime you like, but you can never leave?
The one in which Don asks the Captain to bring him his wine, but it turns out that they haven’t had that spirit there since 1969?
Now it’s 1984, and Don still seems to be stuck inside “Hotel California.” Don is still waiting for that wine. They didn’t have it in 1977, and they sure as hell hadn’t found Don a bottle in 1984. Maybe Don should just let it go?
For some – let’s call them Eagles-skeptics – Don’s obsessing over his generation “selling-out” – their transformation from hippies to yuppies – feels deeply ironic. After all, what with their polished, inoffensive and over-produced country-rock, The Eagles probably did more to ease the hippie-to-yuppie transition than any other single cultural phenomenon. Maybe Don was feeling guilty about his role in crushing the 60s dream?
“Deadhead sticker on a Cadillac.”
Great line, right? Almost as good as, “guilty feet have got no rhythm.” It’s one of those lines that just jumps out at you, even if you’re not exactly clear on what a Deadhead is, and why Don might feel freaked out to see one on a Cadillac.
A Deadhead is a person whose entire life, and possibly their chemical makeup, has been altered after having witnessed a live performance of The Grateful Dead. And can I just say, given their reputation as the possessors of the world’s most loyal fanbase, every single one of whom appears to be a member of a biker gang, I’m always amazed at how much The Grateful Dead… do not rock?
The disparity between their name, their iconography, the fact that they have songs with rockin’ names like “Friend Of The Devil,” and the way they actually sound… it’s a huge disparity. (“Friend Of The Devil” is a 7.)
Listening to The Grateful Dead, it makes perfect sense to me that someone would plaster their stickers all over their prestige-model-Cadillacs. It’s not exactly Iggy & The Stooges, is it? Why wouldn’t a yuppie listen to them?
Who came up with the word “yuppie”? What did people call yuppies before they called them yuppies?
It wasn’t Dan Rottenberg – although he may have been the first to get the word into print, whilst discussing the inner-city Chicago real estate market in May 1980:
“Some 20,000 new dwelling units have been built within two miles of the Loop over the past ten years to accommodate the rising tide of “Yuppies””, Dan observed.
By 1984, light-hearted articles about yuppies, how to identify a yuppie, how to identify whether you yourself, without even realizing it, had turned into a yuppie, were a boom industry. This from the Toronto Star:
One identification mark that The Toronto Star neglected to mention? “A Deadhead sticker on a Cadillac.”
It’s probably best not to fixate too much on that Deadheads lyric. It is, after all, just one lyric. It doesn’t even seem to have anything to do with the plot of “Boys Of Summer”, such as it is. Don spends a greater portion of the song boasting about how good their sex was, and how much he made you scream. The Cadillac thing was just something that happened to Don. He mentions it, then he moves on. It would probably be better for Don if he extended that policy to other aspects of his life: such as his nostalgia for the complex and possibly unrequited love affairs of his youth.
I mean, I think that’s what “Boys Of Summer” is about. Let’s see if you agree…
Don, seemingly living in a seaside tourist town, is in love with an extremely stereotypical “summer girl” – Brown skin shining in the sun? Check!
Hair combed back and sunglasses on? Check! – who dumps his ass every year when the “boys of summer” hit town.
Does Don get to date her in winter? Let’s hope so. Don seems to be weirdly understanding about this annual dump-age, giving her his blessing to go off with the “boys of summer”, letting her know that his “love will still be strong”, once the “boys of summer” go back home in September.
All of which doesn’t seem like a great situation for Don, but he feels nostalgic for it anyway; nostalgic for a love he glimpsed for a second before it was torn away. I could be interpreting this all wrong of course; Don Henley songs are frustratingly ambiguous things.
“Boys Of Summer” sort of sounds like a summer song, and not only because it’s full of guitar licks that sound like seagulls squawking (It also sounds like a song to play in your car, and not just because it mentions a Cadillac).
But it’s also the coldest and darkest song about summer ever written.
It is, after all, a song about summer which opens with “nobody on the road, nobody on the beach, I feel it in the air, the summer’s out of reach.”
The “Boys Of Summer” video is in black & white, and that’s only partially in the hopes that it will look arty (which it very much does.)
It’s also to make it look cold and foreboding. When Don glides into view, it looks as though he’s huddling underneath his jacket, the overcast clouds of middle-age gathering behind him.
“Boys Of Summer” is a mid-life crisis set to music. So obviously it needs a musical backing – composed by Tom Petty guitarist Mike Campbell, who offered it to Tom but he didn’t want it – filled with synthesizers and Linn drum machine patterns, as though Don is saying, “hey 80s kids, I can dig your rad new sounds”. All of which just further underlines how much things have changed since that summer long ago.
“Boys Of Summer” is just summery enough that early 2000s Spanish Eurodance DJs in search of a classic summer anthem to cover can be forgiven for selecting it. It’s still truly weird however to hear the “Deadhead sticker on a Cadillac” line being sung by a Dutch singer called Loona (or Marie-José van der Kolk to her family).
What should they have changed the lyrics to? Who would have been the Eurodance version of “Deadheads” in the early 00s? “Out on the road today, I saw a KLF sticker on an Audio A6.” The DJ Sammy version of “Boys Of Summer” is a 3.
“The Boys Of Summer” is a 9.
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Oh man, as a kid I despised “Careless Whisper”. Probably more out of the fact that all the girls around 14 year-old me were swooning over George and his mane of blow-dried hair. The song is outrageously melodramatic. I still don’t like it, but I recognize that it’s well done and can tolerate it now.
But “I Feel for You”? I’m with you on that stone cold 10. I hadn’t ever read about the song’s construction, so I appreciated the background. Stevie’s harmonica adds so much to that tune. Perfect.
“The Boys of Summer” always bugged me a bit. I was a little torqued that it got all of the attention when I liked other songs on the album like “All She Wants To Do Is Dance” and especially “Sunset Grill” so much more. I still would rather hear those songs, but looking back now, I see why “The Boys of Summer” was so popular. Very well arranged/produced. A lot of nice, understated guitar work.
Good work, Dan!
I pretty much agree with Link. “Careless Whisper” is overrated, “I Feel For You” is underrated, and I’d add “Dirty Laundry” to the list of Don Henley songs that are better than “The Boys Of Summer.” I’d rank today’s songs at 6, 8, 7.
But the story about Prince pretending to be Sly? I’ve never heard that before! Good stuff, Dan!
When I was a kid, my best friend told me Dirty Laundry was inappropriate and I shouldn’t listen to it. I never figured out why, but in retrospect, his parents may have had religious beliefs that put them slightly right of average by small town Kentucky standards…
My parents (not over the top religious) told me Another One Bites the Dust was inappropriate. Haven’t figured that one out either…
What I do know is that when you tell a kid a song is off-limits, it becomes 1000% cooler!
I referenced (the then-current) “Dirty Laundry” in an essay for a college journalism scholarship my sophomore year — and won it. So, yes, I’m a fan, but it’s still only an 8 — not as good as any of the four singles from “Building the Perfect Beast.”
You can add me to the chorus of Careless Whisper disapproval. I was 8 so it was never gonna appeal to me. I wasn’t a Wham! fan but at least Wake Me Up, Club Tropicana and Wham Rap were upbeat floor fillers at the Primary School disco. We weren’t quite ready for slow dance George.
Good write-up, DJPD. I’d give “Careless Whisper” an 8, “I Feel for You” a 10, and “The Boys of Summer” a 9, so we’re pretty close to being in agreement.
In terms of the best Motown pastiche of the ’80s (not done by actual Motown or former Motown artists), I’d go with “Church of the Poison Mind” by Culture Club first, then Hall & Oates’ “Maneater,” and then Human League’s “Mirror Man” before getting to “Freedom.”
And, agreeing with Link, I find “Sunset Grill” to be the 10 off “Building the Perfect Beast,” along with “Not Enough Love in the World.” “The Boys of Summer” and “All She Wants to Do Is Dance” have to settle for runners-up.
I Feel For You is a 10!
The Boys of Summer is a 10 too. There is a version from the Ataris from the 2000s which has the Black Flag sticker on a cadillac.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbPS0Idgskk
Careless Whisper is an 8 or 9. Love both of George Michael’s Freedom songs!
I love George Michael but never got much into Wham! The saxophone has always just made me roll my eyes. I guess I do appreciate it more. I’d say a 7.
“I Feel for You” is a definite 10. I can see why Chaka Khan may not have liked it but as busy as the track is she still dominates. That “FEEL! FOR YOU!” near the end, and that wordless wail after that, still give me chills. The rap is priceless and engrained in the mind of everybody who grew up in the ’80s, and the harmonica is fun, but Khan’s vocal is what makes it. I love Prince and his original track is OK but she did something very rare here: outperformed him.
I’d probably give “The Boys of Summer” a 9 or 10. The Cadillac line is unforgettable and says volumes about aging, losing your innocence, and feeling like you’re running out of time. They timed its release perfectly as it was a hit in the bleak days of winter.