(Credits: Far Out / George Michael)
Sun 8 February 2026 8:30, UK
There’s no accurate way of really describing the kind of voice that George Michael had in his prime.
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.
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.
Pop may have still been his wheelhouse, but it’s 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’s ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ or half of Queen’s catalogue, but he still felt a kinship with what he was hearing out of the Britpop movement when Oasis broke through in 1994.
That might have had something to do with the fact that a song like ‘Fade Away’ ripped off ‘Freedom’, 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.
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’t matter when they had a pop star like Robbie Williams among their ranks when he finally released a song like ‘Angels’.
Barlow might have had his sights on being a musician like Michael was, but the pop legend felt that there was no way that any of his songs could touch what he did, saying, “I hate it. Gary Barlow doesn’t have any talent. I listened to that shit about him, someone discovered in a Northern Working Mens Club, being the new George Michael. Just because he was fat and we both have inflatable cheeks does not mean we are working in the same area. I resent it when people make out my contribution to the early ’80’s was influencing future boy bands.”
It’s not exactly hard to see where Barlow got his inspiration when he started writing tunes like ‘Back for Good’, but there also isn’t really a competition when looking at what Michael could do. Take That’s music did make for a few decent singles throughout their career, but Michael perfected the formula every single time he went into the studio, whether that was when he fully grew up on Faith or when he started moving into dance grooves on Older.
WHAM! did have that teenybopper image for a little while, but even when they were making their most mindless pop music, there was no way that any of those boy bands were going to touch something like ‘Careless Whisper’. They might have taken a few lessons from Michael’s music, but the reason why Michael gravitated towards the rock and roll artists was because he saw something that was truly authentic.
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