RIP George Michael: 1963 - 2016

Hello everyone. Like so many people on social media today, I've been saddened by the death of George Michael. I was a big fan of his music and grew up listening to his biggest hits in the 1980s and 1990s. It is funny how older people have this special affection for the music from their younger years and with his death, I feel very sad because he was such a talented musician who gave the world so much with his music. He was also one of the great icons of the 1980s and I loved his music so much. I did have mixed feelings about the way he was 'outed' as a gay man over his arrest in a Beverley Hills public toilet - I felt that he should have been open about his sexuality a lot earlier but sure enough, that did spell the end of his career in the US, he never ever charted again in America after that incident.

Admittedly, I didn't relate to all of George Michael's music, I found some of the sappy ballads a bit too mushy and written for an older female audience, but I liked his more edgy records where he pushed the boundaries. As for my favourite George Michael track, oh there has got to be two - I can't choose between them, I love them both. The first one that I reached for on Youtube after I heard the news was the 1992 Five Live version of Killer/Papa Was A Rolling Stone - even though that was a cover, I felt that George Michael brought out something edgy, something raw in the song that was absent from the original versions (no offence to Seal or the Temptations). That goes to show what a singer can do, when he invests his own energy, emotions into a song and reinterprets it as his own. That song was special it captured that potent mix of anger, grief, loss and sadness in the audience upon Freddie Mercury's death. 

The second favourite track of mine is Too Funky (1992) and it appeared on the Red, Hot + Dance album which raised money for AIDS awareness. This wasn't one of George Michael's biggest hits - it failed to reach number one in any country, even if it did make top ten in most places including the UK and US. He was singing blatantly about fucking with lyrics like, "Hey, you're just too funky for me,I gotta get inside of you,And I'll show you heaven if you let me." I was 16 then and at that time, I was an angry, rebellious teenager and hated my life so much then - that song promised a life of hedonistic, sexually permissive, pleasurable future in London where I would be so much happier. And guess what? Dreams do come true - I'm now living in North London not far from where George Michael grew up. I'm not quite sure how I feel right now listening to the song on Youtube today because it reminds me of 1992, a year when I was deeply unhappy but I guess the overall feeling is that I'm just glad I'm so far away from the source of that unhappiness so. 

What I find incredibly sad about his death though, is that he went downhill rapidly in the last decade - there were moments of brilliance of course (such as his performance at the closing ceremony of the London 2012 Olympics) but he had so much problems with drink and drugs, he had even spent time in jail for smashing a car whilst driving high on drugs. Recent photos of him from 2016 were not flattering, it was clear that he wasn't well at all and the suspected cause of death is heart failure. I think it is so sad that people who are so talented, who have so much to live for succumb to drink and drugs when they have so much to live for and so much more to offer. This reminds me of Whitney Houston, who died in 2012 - again, yet another brilliant talent destroyed by her addiction to drink and drugs.

Another extremely sad aspect of George Michael's life is the way he had a terrible relationship with his father - that's something I share in common with him. George Michael was born Georgios Kyriacos Panayiotou, son of Kyriacos Panayiotou - a Greek-Cypriot migrant who arrived in the UK in the 1950s. It was a tough, working class childhood in North London - his parents worked extremely hard to bring up their three children. George Michael's father never believed in his son, he thought that trying to pursue a career in music was not realistic and despite the fact that George Michael had sold over 100 million albums and had become one of the world's most iconic musicians of our time, he still never really won the love and respect of his father who remained very distant and estranged from George Michael. Goodness me, that's certainly something I can relate to give my own terrible relationship with my parents. 

In a sense, Georgios Panayiotou created an alter-ego, George Michael and it was this alter-ego that we have grown to know and love, it was his public image and in a sense, it was a manifestation of whom he would like to be. Again, this is something I can relate to - Alex Liang was an alter-ego that I had invented as an adult (I used my Chinese name all the way till the age of about 20), into whom I projected all my ambitions and ideals. I left behind an unhappy, frustrated boy in Singapore whom I would rather not talk about these days - sometimes he still pops up in my dreams, he's still rattling around somewhere back in my head and ironically, that unhappy, frustrated boy in Singapore I left behind was a huge fan of George Michael's music even back in the 1980s and listening to George Michael's music does bring back memories of my childhood. In a sense, in writing this blog, I'm still trying to make peace with that unhappy boy. 

It is so sad that George Michael had achieved such fame, fortune and success with his music, yet he could never escape his demons. He wasn't a happy person and suffered from bouts of depression, which was the main reason why he turned to drink and drugs. Perhaps this is why I am determined not to let my bad relationship with my parents get me down - my regular readers will know that I've spent enough time this year blogging about just how frustrated I have been with the dysfunctional relationship with my parents. Perhaps this is a wake up call to all of us, that we have to let go of things that we can't change, that will simply eat us up from the inside and make us unhappy. It is unfortunate to end 2016 on such a sad note, but let's remind ourselves that it is time to let our demons go and focus on being positive and constructive in 2017. RIP George Michael and thank you for the music. Thanks for reading.