Back in 1985 Elton John released Wrap Her Up a song about their mutual love of women where they list all the famous faces they’d like to take home with them.
Given that both later came out and had gay relationships, the song stands out as a time capsule of a time when many musicians kept their sexuality under wraps. At the time of the songs release Elton John was in a heterosexual relationship, married to sound engineer Renate Blauel.
The song was the second single from Elton John’s Ice on Fire album which had launched with the single Nikita. George Michael provides additional vocals on the track and sings in a falsetto.
Michael would later comment on the track in an interview with teen music mag Number One saying “it sounded like I had my willy in a garotte.”
The song came years before Madonna was listing celebrities in Vogue and features a long list of women that Elton John and George Michael admire.
The pair highlight everyone from Marilyn Monroe, Marlene Dietrich, Brigitte Bardot and Doris Day through to Billie Jean King, Samantha Fox, Joan Collins, Katherine Hepburn, Vivien Leigh, Grace Jones and Priscilla Presley.
They also list Vanessa Williams, Dusty Springfield, Nancy Regan, Rita Hayworth, Julia Andrews, Annie Lennox, Mata Hari, Shirley Temple, Tallulah Bankhead, Linda Lovelace, Little Eva, Nastassja Kinski, and Princess Caroline of Monaco.
Elton John’s previous duet partner Kiki Dee is also name-checked, as is George Michael’s friend Pat Fernandez who appeared in several Wham! videos. Superwoman also gets a mention, as does Madonna, who is referred to as The Material Girl.
One name in the song that might be less recognisable is Elsie Tanner, she a fictional character from the British soap Coronation Street.
The album version of the song runs for over 6 minutes, but the music video version is abridged cutting almost two minutes from the tracks running time, and missing many of the women the pair list.
Elton John played the song several times during the first leg of his 1985 tour, but soon dropped it from the set list, and it’s faded into obscurity since then. The song got to number 22 on the Australian charts, number 20 in the USA and was a number 12 hit in the United Kingdom.
Elton John and George Michael did collaborate again and have chart success. Elton appeared on stage the following year and Wham’s final concert, and in 1991 he joined George Michael on stage at Wembley Arena during his Cover to Cover tour and performed John’s song Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me. It was released as a single and became a huge global hit. The pair had previously performed the song together at 1985’s Live Aid concert.
There may also be a long lost collaboration between the pair. In the early 1990’s George Michael began recording sessions from an album that was to be called Trojan Souls.
Michael’s plan for the album was to write a series of songs, but mostly have the sung by other artists. Among the talents lined up for the album were good friend Elton John alongside Anita Baker, Seal, Sade and Aretha Franklin.
Elton John recorded the song This Kind of Love, but the project was abandoned after Michael’s partner Anselmo Feleppa died in 1993, sending the singer into a long period of grieving.
