{"id":561707,"date":"2026-07-27T10:52:09","date_gmt":"2026-07-27T10:52:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/561707\/"},"modified":"2026-07-27T10:52:09","modified_gmt":"2026-07-27T10:52:09","slug":"the-greatest-album-never-made-the-untold-story-of-george-michaels-secret-star-packed-duets-project-george-michael","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/561707\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018The greatest album never made\u2019: the untold story of George Michael\u2019s secret, star-packed duets project | George Michael"},"content":{"rendered":"

The George Michael<\/a> album that never was began in defiance and ended in grief. It was 1992. Mired in a toxic dispute with Sony Records, Michael chose to keep busy and declare his independence by making an album of songs to be sung by several of his musical heroes, including Aretha Franklin, Janet Jackson and Sade Adu, under the alias the Trojan Souls. Michael worked on the album for months until his Brazilian boyfriend Anselmo Feleppa died of Aids in March 1993 and he lost interest in music. It was never revived.<\/p>\n

Tracks from the sessions have since leaked, along with some of the fly-on-the-wall footage filmed by Michael\u2019s close friend and informal adviser Andros Georgiou, who has spent years trying to get unauthorised clips removed from YouTube and TikTok. Now, months before the 10th anniversary of Michael\u2019s death, he is releasing 90 minutes of unedited video as Trojan Souls \u2013 not exactly a film but an unfiltered view of Michael in his creative prime. \u201cI thought these fans were making money from my rights so I decided to stop fighting and get it out there,\u201d Georgiou says. He hopes it will open a door on what he calls, with characteristic hyperbole, \u201cthe greatest album never made\u201d.<\/p>\n

Georgiou called his self-published 2012 memoir Rock: The Luckiest Man in Pop, the luck being that his father and Michael\u2019s father were cousins who emigrated to England from Cyprus together in 1953, so he grew up alongside one of the greatest artists of his generation. They remained close until a bitter falling out in 1998, of which more later.<\/p>\n

\u2018He had a 48-track studio in his mind\u2019 \u2026 Michael at work. Photograph: Courtesy Andros Georgiou<\/p>\n

Ever loyal to his childhood friends (another, David Austin, now runs his estate), Michael gave Georgiou creative opportunities. They first collaborated as Boogie Box High, whose cover of the Bee Gees\u2019 Jive Talkin\u2019 was a Top 10 hit in 1987, and co-founded Aegean Records in 1996. Georgiou was also a regular on-the-road companion. When they were in Tokyo during the Faith tour, Sony gave Georgiou a state-of-the-art Hi8 video camera which enabled him to make high-quality home movies.<\/p>\n

Georgiou makes the origins of the Trojan Souls sound as a dramatic as a heist. When Michael released Listen Without Prejudice Vol 1 in 1990, he was so sick of his sex-symbol image that he disappeared from view: no appearances in videos or on record sleeves, no interviews, no concerts. \u201cHe wanted to make music but he didn\u2019t want to play the lying game any more,\u201d says Georgiou. Michael believed that Sony then punished him by underpromoting the album. The singer felt trapped.<\/p>\n

double quotation markBeing arrested was the beginning of the end. He laughed it off but it seriously affected him<\/p>\n

In January 1992, he and Georgiou flew to LA for some winter sun but Michael soon got bored and suggested going to Dave Stewart\u2019s Chapel Studios in Encino to bang out a quick cover in the spirit of Boogie Box High. The 1979 disco hit Ain\u2019t No Stoppin\u2019 Us Now was a symbolic choice because Gene McFadden and John Whitehead originally wrote it to rebuke their own label, Philadelphia International. Michael decided they should return in July to start an album, recruiting vocalists he had loved growing up. According to Georgiou, only David Bowie politely declined. He says the name came to him in a dream: The Voice of Reason by the Trojan Souls. \u201cFrom the Trojan horse,\u201d he says. \u201cThe soldiers came in and then came down fighting.\u201d<\/p>\n

Back in London, Georgiou was contractually obliged to offer it to Sony first, despite the bad blood. \u201cOf course they said no. I called George and he said, \u2018Fuck Sony!\u2019 I went, \u2018I\u2019ll be home in two hours with a deal, trust me.\u2019\u201d Georgiou called an A&R at Warner and dashed over. \u201cRob Dickins, the chair, was there. He said, \u2018What do you want?\u2019 I said a million pounds. He goes, done.\u201d In October, Michael filed a lawsuit against Sony, alleging that his contract was unreasonable restraint of trade. \u201cHe wanted to get back at Sony any which way he could,\u201d says Georgiou.<\/p>\n

Despite the project\u2019s bitter origins, the three songs in the film have a sunny, funky dynamism. \u201cHe was so happy,\u201d Georgiou says. \u201cFor the first couple of months we probably had the best time of our lives making this record.\u201d The lush ballad One Day I\u2019ll Know was destined for Stevie Wonder and the shimmering Maybe It\u2019s Not Your Time for Bryan Ferry. The instrumental track Wendy Melvoin\u2019s Song featured virtuosic rhythm guitar by one half of Wendy and Lisa, in the hope that she would lure her former employer Prince on board.<\/p>\n

Obsessed with protecting his mystique, Michael was never officially filmed handling an instrument or building a track. \u201cIf you\u2019re a fan,\u201d says Georgiou, \u201cthis is your first chance to see how he directs everyone in the studio.\u201d It\u2019s fascinating to watch how precisely Michael drills his world-class musicians \u2013 Melvoin, keyboardist Chris Cameron, bassist Deon Estus and Lynn Mabry\u2019s backing singers \u2013 through take after take, even grabbing Estus\u2019s bass guitar at one point to show him what he means. To the viewer the takes may sound identical but Michael was always chasing the perfect sound he heard in his head.<\/p>\n

Collaboration \u2026 Elton John and Micheal in the early 1990s. Photograph: Photoshot\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

\u201cHe had a 48-track studio in his mind,\u201d says Georgiou. He recalls how, even when they were kids, Michael used to deconstruct songs by their favourite artists and explain how he would have changed this or that. Or how, when they were working at Sarm West in Notting Hill, Michael would get in the car with a cassette of a skeletal backing track and have a melody written by the time he got home to Hampstead.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was quite a frustrating person to work with because he had quite a strange creative process,\u201d says Sathnam Sanghera, author of Tonight the Music Seems So Loud: The Meaning of George Michael. \u201cHe would often sing at musicians and say, \u2018This is what I want it to sound like.\u2019 I\u2019ve talked to a lot of musicians who worked with him and almost all of them said the same thing: \u2018At the time it drove us fucking mad.\u2019 But looking back they can see that of all the people they\u2019d worked with he was the most talented. He just had these amazing ears.\u201d<\/p>\n

double quotation markThis is just the beginning of something that could have been amazing<\/p>\n

The fragments heard in Trojan Souls are tantalising but only the Elton John collaboration This Kind of Love was ever completed. By the start of 1993, Feleppa was fading fast. \u201cIt was terribly difficult for him to finish anything so we went from track to track,\u201d Georgiou says. \u201cAnd then it got too much for him.\u201d Leaving work unfinished was not unusual for Michael, though. \u201cGeorge had a history of losing interest,\u201d says Sanghera. \u201cA lot of projects never came to fruition: Listen Without Prejudice Vol 2, the Daft Punk collaboration, the duets album \u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

A few years later, Georgiou\u2019s friendship with Michael ended, too. On 7 April 1998, Michael was arrested for \u201cengaging in lewd conduct\u201d in a public toilet in LA\u2019s Will Rogers Memorial Park and the closeted star was outed to the world. \u201cBasically it all went wrong when he was arrested,\u201d Georgiou says. \u201cHe laughed it off but it seriously affected him mentally and that was the beginning of the end.\u201d<\/p>\n

When I interviewed Michael in 2004, he connected the incident to losing his mother to cancer a year earlier. Having finally worked through the creative drought occasioned by Feleppa\u2019s death to make 1996\u2019s Older, he was poleaxed by grief once again. \u201cReally since 1991, when I found out [Feleppa] was HIV positive, all I\u2019d done was either wait for someone to die or grieve,\u201d he told me. \u201cIt was just so easy to feel picked on and angry and nihilistic.\u201d<\/p>\n

Close before a bitter falling out \u2026 Georgiou and Michael. Photograph: Courtesy Andros Georgiou<\/p>\n

Michael\u2019s compulsive cruising on Hampstead Heath created a rift. Georgiou thought it was self-destructive; Michael resented his friend\u2019s judgment. \u201cI couldn\u2019t understand the risks he was taking,\u201d Georgiou says. \u201cHe was loud and proud, which I absolutely respected, but you can\u2019t carry on doing what you\u2019re doing.\u201d He claims that the final straw was Michael suddenly ordering him to drop Aegean\u2019s entire roster. \u201cThe next day I was just like, you know what? Fuck you. And I walked out.\u201d<\/p>\n

An alternative account is that Georgiou crossed a line by telling his story, and giving family photographs, to Hello! magazine. Either way, Michael told me, \u201closing that relationship absolutely devastated me. Everything I took for granted in my 20s I lost.\u201d Georgiou says that they tentatively reconnected in 2016 and planned to meet up in the new year. \u201cIt took a lot. We\u2019re both Greeks at heart and have our arrogance and pride. And then he died. Even talking about it now, I can\u2019t believe it.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Trojan Souls material wasn\u2019t mothballed entirely. Ain\u2019t No Stoppin\u2019 Us Now was released on Aegean Records in 1998, as one of the first ever commercially available MP3s, and Michael rerecorded This Kind of Love, sans Elton, not long before his death \u2013 Sanghera calls it \u201chis one great unreleased song\u201d. As for the rest, we can only imagine. Could The Voice of Reason ultimately have been a triumph?<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it could have worked as a duets album, because 90% of George was his voice,\u201d Sanghera says. \u201cHe was at his creative peak. This could have been Listen Without Prejudice Vol 2 if his lover wasn\u2019t dying, if he hadn\u2019t sued Sony. But I think he would have needed another two years for a fully realised album. This is just the beginning of something that could have been amazing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Georgiou has often been regarded with suspicion by Michael\u2019s fans for monetising his proximity to pop genius. Now he is preparing a rewritten memoir, an accompanying film, the release of more footage on his website, and even a duet version of This Kind of Love if he can get Elton John\u2019s blessing. Then again, these are his videos and Trojan Souls was his project, too. Given his long estrangement from Michael, the home movies document not just an unfinished album but a much-missed friendship. \u201cIt\u2019s my legacy in a way,\u201d he says. \u201cI was there for nearly 40 years. What a time!\u201d<\/p>\n

Trojan Souls is available for streaming at trojansouls.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The George Michael album that never was began in defiance and ended in grief. It was 1992. Mired…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":561708,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[146,85,46,409],"class_list":["post-561707","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-entertainment","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/561707","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=561707"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/561707\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/561708"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=561707"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=561707"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=561707"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}