Faith, the debut solo album from George Michael was released 35 years ago today. The iconic record would cement in Michael’s status as one of the biggest pop stars of the 1980s.
The album contained nine songs, and seven of them were released as singles. I Want Your Sex, Faith, Father Figure, Monkey, Kissing a Fool, One More Try and Hard Day kept Michael in the charts for several years after the album’s initial release.
Michael’s music career began five years earlier in 1982 when his band Wham! put out their first single Wham Rap. Alongside childhood friend Andrew Ridgely, his career began rapping about Britain under the leadership of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.
Wham’s later music moved away from rapping and embraced a soul pop sound, and the hits came thick and fast. They quickly released three albums of material, their faces adorned the covers of teen magazines, they toured the world, and their videos were in high rotation on music video channels.
Then in 1986 they called it quits, with Michael eager to move on to a more adult orientated career. The band went out with a bang though, releasing their third album, appropriately titled The Final, and they finished off with a massive concert at Wembley Stadium.
Michael’s solo career began during the Wham! era. The song Careless Whisper was released as a solo project in 1984, although it the USA it was branded as a Wham! release. He later released the melancholic Different Corner and early in 1987 had a huge smash hit teaming up with Aretha Franklin for I Knew You Were Waiting (For Me).
The first taste of the album came with the release of I Want Your Sex which featured on the soundtrack to the film Beverly Hills Cop II.
I Want Your Sex however was something very different from the British singer, provocative, danceable, with a video that was controversial for the time, and an overt sexual message at a time of extreme conservatism.
The song came in three parts, the first part forming the single, while the 12-inch version included a second brass filled funk section, and before descending into a jazz influenced slow soul groove for the final part. The three parts clearly charting seduction, action and recovery.
George Michael recorded the first part of the song back in 1986 immediately after his time with Wham came to an end. Working in the studio Michael played all the instruments and the song’s distinctive squelchy bass opening was created serendipitously.
“So what happened was, we were writing a much faster Pop song that I did have in my head, called Johnny Sex. We needed to trigger a sound off the Juno 106, and in order to do it we had to take the drum pattern down to half speed. It didn’t quite work, but it accidentally set the Juno off to a random pattern, which became the pumping noise at the bottom of I Want Your Sex.
“I thought it sounded really good, really tribal, and it gave me a totally different idea which I worked around, I just played the other stuff and had it sequenced.” Michael later recalled to International Musician magazine.
The video for the song was created by Andy Moran and featured Michael and his then girlfriend Kathy Jeung. Throughout the video Michael is seen writing the worlds ‘explore’ and ‘monogamy’ on parts of what appears to be Jeung’s body – but it was actually a body double.
George Michael also appears to be naked, a second of footage that was shocking for audiences in 1987. The video and the song were heavily criticised for encouraging people to have sex, even though the singer was promoting monogamy – it was at a time that complete abstinence from sex is what was being taught in many schools.
When it was released in the United Kingdom the BBC banned it from being played during the day.
The second single, and the album’s opening title track came out a few weeks ahead of the album’s release. It came with a video that would become an iconic image of Michael’s career – and one that he’d rebel against in later releases. Aviator sunglasses, big cross earing, stubble, leather jacket, guitar and a jukebox would define George Michael for the rest of his career.
When the song was originally composed it was only two minutes long, adding a guitar solo in the middle stretched it out for an extra minute. The gospel sounding intro to Faith is actually the chorus of one of his earlier hits – the Wham! song Freedom.
George Michael’s chart success continued with Father Figure. While it initially started off as a dance track, in the studio it was transformed into a gospel sounding song with a clear Middle Eastern influence.
The song would later by sampled by P.M. Dawn, L.L. Cool J and Destiny’s Child. Its video showed Michael as a taxi driver, while his love interest was played by British model Tania Harcourt.
The single included a live recording on the flip side, George Michael singing Stevie Wonder’s Love’s in Need of Love Today. It would be one of many songs by the Motown legend that he’d record or perform live during his career.
George Michael said the fourth single from the album was written and recorded in just eight hours. One More Try tells of a man hesitant to enter a relationship because of his previous bad experiences.
Clocking in at six minutes in length, it’s quite long for a pop song. The video was filmed by acclaimed director Tony Scott and was filmed at The Carrington Hotel in the Blue Mountains here in Australia.
The song would remain as one of George Michael’s favourites, and he sang it often in live performances. It’s also been covered by Joan Baez, Mariah Carey, Beverly Knight, Hazel O’Connor and many others.
The single to be lifted from the record was Monkey and it took fans back to the dancefloor. For the single release the track was remixed by producers Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis – the production duo behind recent hits for Janet Jackson, Alexander O’Neil and The Human League.
Michael would later recount that the song was inspired by his conversations with a friend who was struggling with drug use, the ‘monkey’ being a substitute for overt drug references in the song.
The choreography for the video was undertaken by Paula Abdul, who just a year later would top charts around the world when she launched her own music career. The video also features footage from Michael’s 1988 World Tour.
Earlier this year Pose star Billy Porter recorded the song to celebrate Pride month in the USA.
Kissing a Fool was released as a single in November 1988, more than a year after the Faith album hit the shelves of record stores.
Originally it was going to be the title track for the album. The song was written many years early when Michael was on a plane heading to Wham’s 1984 tour of Japan.
While the song didn’t make the Australian Top 40, stalling at number 55, it was a hit in the United Kingdom, Canada, Belgium, Ireland, The Netherlands and in the USA where it reached the number 5 spot on the Billboard Hot 100.
The jazz influenced tune would later be recorded by crooner Michael Buble.
The song Hard Day was also released as a single in the USA, but it didn’t get a video. The song had previously appeared on the flipside of the 12-inch version of I Want Your Sex.
A remix of the track by Shep Pettibone appeared on the original CD and cassette release but was omitted from the vinyl release.
Faith would go on to sell over 25 million copies around the world, it spent 12 weeks at number one on the US Billboard 200 album chart, it won the Grammy for Album of the Year, and in 2010 Rolling Stone ranked in number 151 on their list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.
OIP Staff
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