![\"George](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/George-Michael-Musician-1980s-Far-Out-Magazine-1140x855.jpg\")
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(Credits: Far Out \/ George Michael)<\/p>\n
Sun 8 February 2026 8:30, UK <\/p>\n
There\u2019s no accurate way of really describing the kind of voice that George Michael<\/a> had in his prime. <\/p>\n While any musician would have killed to have the vocal chops that Freddie Mercury or Robert Plant had in their prime, Michael earned legendary status thanks to the pure power in his voice whenever he performed his old hits live. He had studied under some of the greatest belters that the world had ever known, but that meant that he could also tell when a few people were trying too hard behind the scenes.<\/p>\n Then again, Michael could have easily been a talent scout looking at the kind of artists that he gravitated towards. He was already lucky enough to share the stage with the remaining members of Queen, Elton John, and Aretha Franklin to name just a few, but he always kept his ears to the ground in case the next big thing was coming around in the R&B, whether that was gushing over Lauryn Hill went she went solo or the vocal presence that Amy Winehouse brought to every single song she sang.<\/p>\n Pop may have still been his wheelhouse, but it\u2019s impossible to ignore his keen ear for rock and roll. Some of his picks for the greatest rock and roll songs of all time might be a little bit bog-standard, like Nirvana\u2019s \u2018Smells Like Teen Spirit\u2019<\/a>\u00a0or half of Queen\u2019s catalogue, but he still felt a kinship with what he was hearing out of the Britpop movement when Oasis broke through in 1994.\u00a0<\/p>\n That might have had something to do with the fact that a song like \u2018Fade Away\u2019 ripped off \u2018Freedom\u2019, but as far as Michael was concerned, that was a compliment. These were a bunch of kids from Manchester that were on the fast track to becoming one of the biggest bands in the world, and even if they had a few songs that they borrowed from their favourite acts, that made much more sense than the other musical fluff that Michael was hearing out of the pop world around that time.<\/p>\n Because on the other side of the Britpop coin, there were bands like Take That. Their teenybopper mentality might have fit in with what bands like New Kids on the Block were doing across the pond at the time, but even if Gary Barlow was the one behind all of their finest songs, that didn\u2019t matter when they had a pop star like Robbie Williams among their ranks when he finally released a song like \u2018Angels\u2019.<\/p>\n