(Credits: Far Out / Spotify)
Tue 9 December 2025 8:00, UK
Wham! is often left out of pop memory when considering the artists who truly conquered America across the early 1980s’ second British invasion.
But George Michael was already a mammoth star before his even more gargantuan solo career. Alongside the likes of The Clash and The Police’s MTV domination, the tsunami of UK pop and new wave acts saw Michael and co-Whammer Andrew Ridgeley storm their home country with 1983’s Fantastic, before topping the Billboard charts with Make It Big the following year. By their 1986 farewell show in Wembley, even Duran Duran and Billy Idol were left eating the duo’s dust.
Just as the pair looked set to enjoy an unrivalled pop reign, Michael decided to shake off the teen audience and head toward a more mature adult direction, away from the Smash Hits posterboy image dogging him into his mid-20s.
Michael’s solo transition was a mushy one, the US receiving late Wham! singles like ‘Careless Whisper’ and ‘A Different Corner’ in a somewhat confused marketing, as both the final offerings from his former pop duo and the debut of his solo venture.
His first true, official single, however, couldn’t have established his solo stature any better. Dropped early 1987, the ‘I Knew You Were Waiting (For Me)’ duet found Michael collaborating with the original Queen of Soul, Aretha Franklin, a towering figure of Michael’s musical life so dauntingly intimidating that he had sooner shopped his songwriting gifts for Michael Jackson and Stevie Wonder than approach the lauded ‘Respect’ singer.
Lyrics would eventually be handled by Simon Climie and Dennis Morgan, but everybody in the studio reportedly knew they had a hit on their hands. Arriving at the studio with a rack of ribs, Franklin was able to lay down her vocal tracks while snacking and throwing a cleared bone straight to the bin the other side of the room every time, each vocal cut and bone toss executed effortlessly. Michael was starstruck.
“I’m standing there just freaking out,” Michael recalled to BBC Radio 2 in 2014. “I’m on the other side of the mic from Aretha Franklin, and she’s treating me like an equal—obviously I’m not, but she was treating me with such respect.”
Michael had already rubbed shoulders with some of music’s biggest names, standing as one of the Band Aid singers for that year’s ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas?’ charity monster, but few artists were as wrapped in US political and cultural history as Franklin. As well as boasting a classic songbook, Franklin’s presence during the Civil Rights era gave an enduring voice to the American Black experience, ensuring an essentiality that elevates her work far above mere commercial success. It’s no wonder Michael felt unworthy.
Their collaboration was a winning one. Launching Michael’s solo career in earnest, ‘I Knew You Were Waiting (For Me)’ would gift Franklin with a global pop smash, and top the charts in both the US and UK, the first time in her nearly 30-year career to ever do so.
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