George Michael’s video for Freedom ’90 is one of the most iconic music clips of all time, and now behind the scenes footage and outtakes from the clip have been released for the first time.

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When George released his second solo album Listen Without Prejudice Vol 1 in 1990 he wanted to be taken more seriously as a songwriter, and refused to appear in music videos to promote the record.

For the first single Praying for Time the singer created a simple video featuring just the song’s lyrics. Today almost every tune that’s released has a lyric video, but back in 1990 it was almost unheard of.

When it came time for a second single, George agreed for a big budget video, but he wasn’t going to be in it. Instead he took inspiration from a photograph shot by Peter Linbergh for the cover of British Vogue in 1990.

Lindbergh’s now iconic image featured the world’s top 5 supermodels, Naomi Campbell, Linda Evangelista, Tatjana Patitz, Christy Turlington, and Cindy Crawford. George asked the five models to appear in the video lip-syncing his song. Each was paid $15,000 for their single day’s work.

Top music video director David Fincher directed the clip. Fincher had previously made some of the most popular music videos of the late 1980’s including Madonna’s Express Yourself and Vogue as well as many of Paula Abdul’s videos.

Before he passed away on Christmas Day last year George had been working on the re-release of the album and had created a documentary about making the record. The newly released footage is part of the promotion for the sadly delayed project.

The clips show Michael on the set of the video alongside behind the scenes shots and outtakes.

Check out the clip below.

Nile Roger’s has just remixed one of the album’s b-sides. The disco legend gave George Michael’s Fantasy a make over taking out the 90’s sounding trumpets and adding some seriously funky base.

The new version of the song is Michael’s first posthumous release.

OIP Staff