{"id":675790,"date":"2026-07-05T23:38:10","date_gmt":"2026-07-05T23:38:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/675790\/"},"modified":"2026-07-05T23:38:10","modified_gmt":"2026-07-05T23:38:10","slug":"the-1983-wham-hit-george-michael-always-regretted","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/675790\/","title":{"rendered":"The 1983 Wham! hit George Michael always regretted"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"The<\/p>\n

Credit: Far Out \/ Record Sleeve \/ YouTube Still<\/p>\n

Sun 5 July 2026 21:23, UK <\/p>\n

The late\u00a0George Michael<\/a>\u00a0was not one to mince his words. In his time in the limelight, he undid the traditional idea of a pop star by being one of the most outspoken prominent musicians with a distinctly punk attitude. <\/p>\n

Regarding Wham!, of course, they were a touch campy, but there was more to some of their songs than many gave them credit for, with Michael being a master in wry comedy and parody. Yet, this popular misunderstanding of his band would be something he touched upon several times to set the record straight.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In terms of his personality, fans only need to look to Michael\u2019s love of great music, such as Joy Division and Nirvana, to understand that he was so much more than hits such as \u2018Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go\u2019 \u2013 despite that particular song being a masterclass in reviving 1950s and early 1960s pop for a new generation \u2013 and the fact that he would dryly reference his legal troubles in music videos and his Extras cameo.<\/p>\n

Wham! were one of the greatest pop acts of all time. While their life span was relatively short, lasting for five years between 1981 and 1986, they rose to become one of the most successful acts of the decade, selling more than 30 million records globally from 1982 to their split.\u00a0While Andrew Ridgely also had his part to play<\/a>, Michael was the tip of the group\u2019s spear. His songwriting ability, societal outlook, and gamut of influences were a potent mixture.<\/p>\n

That complexity often became lost beneath Wham!\u2019s colourful image. To casual audiences, they were an irresistible pop duo defined by bright videos and chart-topping singles, but Michael\u2019s writing frequently revealed an artist engaging with issues far removed from the carefree persona that surrounded the band. <\/p>\n

\"George<\/a>Credit: Netflix<\/p>\n

The brilliant thing about Wham! was that while they were ostensibly influenced by funk and soul and found themselves rightly categorised in the pop genre, their early work contained a distinguishable socio-political slant, with their 1983 debut, Fantastic, addressing the era\u2019s disaffected youth, the unemployment of the early Thatcher years and teen angst. <\/p>\n

It\u2019s a record brimming with topical political sentiment. This encompasses the classic lead single, \u2018Wham Rap!\u2019, which sharply celebrated unemployment and explicitly mentioned the now-defunct Department of Health and Social Security. Because of such an angle, the only song that truly stood out from Fantastic was \u2018Club Tropicana\u2019, the final single, which proved a sunny, hedonistic counterpoint to the previous ones steeped in everyday life. <\/p>\n

There\u2019s no surprise that Michael changed his tact after the record\u2019s first three socio-political singles. In the group\u2019s last-ever interview in 1986, he revealed that he felt his writing had become too formulaic at the time, which led to him naming \u2018Bad Boys\u2019 the Wham! song he hated most intensely. He explained that the third single from Fantastic was \u201cintended to be funny,\u201d but he felt he failed in pulling off his parody, which was misunderstood due to its uninventive nature. He felt the video was much the same. Due to the track missing the mark, he made it clear it became a burden for him after release. <\/p>\n

Michael said: \u201cAnd that\u2019s the only record I\u2019ve ever written to formula, and I think that\u2019s why I don\u2019t like it as a record, and the video is the same thing; we\u2019d forgotten that \u2018Wham Rap!\u2019 and \u2018Young Guns\u2019 were supposed to be parodies of the people that we were playing. I mean, the guy in \u2018Young Guns\u2019 that\u2019s talking to the girl is supposed to be a total prat, and in \u2018Wham Rap!\u2019 is\u00a0basically\u00a0the same thing, it was parody. I wrote \u2018Bad Boys\u2019 as a parody of this\u00a0kind of\u00a0macho image.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

For Michael, the problem was never the intention behind the song but its execution. Satire relies on audiences recognising the joke, and he felt \u2018Bad Boys\u2019 was embraced by many listeners as the very stereotype it was trying to mock, stripping the track of the irony he believed had made earlier Wham! singles so effective.<\/p>\n

This\u00a0wasn\u2019t the only moment Michael would trash \u2018Bad Boys\u2019. In a sign of the great strides to come later in his career as a solo artist, not long after Wham! split in 1986, he described the hit as \u201can albatross around my neck\u201d. Not finished there,\u00a0\u201cI hate it,\u201d he concluded<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Michael\u2019s dislike of \u2018Bad Boys\u2018 ultimately reflected the extraordinarily high standards he set for himself as a songwriter. Even at the height of Wham!\u2019s commercial success, he was already thinking beyond catchy pop hooks, determined to create songs that balanced mass appeal with genuine substance. That restless self-criticism would become one of the defining traits of his solo career, helping transform him from teen idol into one of Britain\u2019s most respected songwriters.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

ADD AS A PREFERRED SOURCE ON GOOGLE \"\"\/ <\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Credit: Far Out \/ Record Sleeve \/ YouTube Still Sun 5 July 2026 21:23, UK The late\u00a0George Michael\u00a0was…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":675791,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[30275,192945,96,25263,128,56,54,55,122786],"class_list":["post-675790","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-1980s","tag-192945","tag-entertainment","tag-george-michael","tag-music","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-wham"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/675790","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=675790"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/675790\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/675791"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=675790"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=675790"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=675790"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}