I’ve had a long day filled with multitasking, but I’ve got one more task in front of me – get through this accursed record and move on to something better! No doubt many will disagree with the 900 words or so that follows, given how this next record was such a critical darling. Alas, you are reading my review, and not all those more favourable ones.
Disc 1735 is…Listen Without Prejudice Vol. 1
Artist: George Michael
Year of Release: 1990
What’s up with the Cover? A bunch of people in a crowd, maybe at a George Michael concert. Wherever they are it looks hot as a lot of them have their shirts off, are wearing shorts, or both.
They’re still smiling, which suggests the show hasn’t started yet.
How I Came To Know It: This is one of Sheila’s thrift store finds, which she snagged for a lowly $4. I expect it felt like a good deal at the time.
How It Stacks Up: This is our only George Michael album, so it can’t stack up against anything. I hold out hope that one day Sheila will find “Faith” in the thrift store and it will fare better, but for now, here’s where we are.
Rating: 2 stars but barely
Reader, I listened without prejudice as instructed. If anything, I was genuinely excited to be won over by an artist I reviled in the eighties, as has happened with any number of other artists (see reviews for U2 and the Police as two salient examples of me freely admitting to my past wrongs). Instead, I found myself fervently hoping I’d never have to hear whatever “Vol. 2” might sound like. Fortunately, Michaels never released that as a record. Small mercies indeed.
As for “Vol. 1” (and only), it doesn’t 100% suck, so before we unleash any vitriol let us consider those rare but notable parts of the record that are good. It won’t take long, but it’s worth the journey.
First and foremost is the album’s most remembered song, “Freedom”. This song has combination of syncopated percussion underpinning it that is nothing short of revelatory. It can’t even be called a pop hook, it’s just a collection of cool beats and a few organ notes alchemically mixed up into awesome-sauce. The actual hook comes much later with the chorus of “I don’t belong to you/and you don’t belong to me” and then another hook with the church choir-like delivery of “freedom!”
It is such a great song that it pains me to note its painful six-and-a-half-minute length. I was good with a solid five and half minutes, but that last minute. That was a minute too far, George. That moment was a microcosm for the record which is 48 minutes long but drags on as though it were 84. It’s the start of the nineties and it feels like George Michael is channeling the bloated “CDs hold more” quality of records that would follow.
The song that follows “Freedom”, “They Won’t Go When I Go” is another solid track. Just piano and and Michaels’ powerful vocals. This song is haunting and beautiful as well. Kudos.
It went downhill from here.
It all starts (ends?) with “Something to Save” a song that has all the overwrought qualities of Jason Segel’s vampire puppet show song “Dracula’s Lament” from “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” (listen here) but none of the boyish charm, and absolutely no vampires. “Dracula’s Lament” made me want to see the full puppet show the actual movie only hints at. “Something to Save” hints at the overbearing, self-absorbed sickly-sweet collection of songs that will follow. Yes, George Michael has a great voice, but this song feels like it wants to be a Freddie Mercury ballad but is lacking the lyrical and melodic creativity to pull it off.
Immediately following this we get a brush on drum swish of jazz-adjacent fuckery on “Cowboys and Angels”. This monster is over seven minutes long and does not have the inherent charm and creativity of “Freedom” to hold it up for even half that. The last third throws in some wandering sax solo action as if to remind you one last time of the worst innovation to pop music the eighties ever invited is still alive and well into the new decade.
A few songs later, Michael doubles down on bad arrangement choices, with a jazz flute on “Soul Free” that had me wishing my soul was free. Free of my body, so I wouldn’t have to listen anymore. But just like Dracula in “Dracula’s Lament”, “die, die, die…I can’t”.
George Michael sings with full conviction and gives it his all in an authentic way (earning the album a second star along the way) but it is an authenticity wasted on songs that circle aimlessly around musical concepts that feel laboured and repetitive. Like a knight earnestly indicating that he’s about to go forth and undertake heroic deeds but instead just keeps sitting there on his horse staring into the middle distance: it briefly feels majestic until you realize nothing else is going to happen.
Well, something is going to happen, George, and that something is me parting company with this record. With sincere apologies to the one great song on the record, may “you don’t belong to me, and I don’t belong to you” be true as soon as fucking possible.
Best tracks: Freedom (for about 5 minutes), They Won’t Go When I Go
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