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A portrait of late British singer George Michael sits next to bouquets of floral tributes outside the singer's home in north London. — AP/AFP photos

A photograph of British singer George Michael is seen among floral tributes and candles outside Michael's north London home, after Pictures of British singer George Michael are seen among candles and floral tributes piled news of the singer's death broke. Tributes poured in from the music world on December 26 after British pop superstar George Michael, against the door of Michael's home, where the singer died on Christmas Day, in the vil- who rose to fame with the duo Wham! and a string of smash hits including "Last Christmas", died aged 53. Michael died of apparent lage of Goring, southern England. heart failure on Christmas Day at his home in Goring, a village on the River Thames in Oxfordshire, west of London, after an award-win- ning career spanning more than three decades. — AFP An Appreciation of George Michael: He let superstardom slip away, but his pop artistry sounds more sublime with time

By Owen Gleiberman The way we remember the pop culture of the '80s is him. It's not that he looked so much older-it's that the still shaped, to a degree, by the Gen-Xers who came up aura was gone. And once George Michael let that rom his earliest days as a booty-shaking teen-pop during that decade. They were the first ironic generation, dimension of himself go, he seemed to relinquish much sensation-"Make It Big," the Wham! album on which so they helped to place a certain guilty-pleasure, it's- of his passion as an artist too. Despite the majesty of Fhe made it big, was released in October 1984, trash-but-I-love-it aesthetic at the center of things. That "Freedom '90," "Listen Without Prejudice Vol. 1" was not a when he was just 21 -- George Michael did more than sensibility seems made to order when it comes to success, and that appeared to confirm-at least, in his hunger for stardom. He craved credibility as a pop musi- remembering Wham! The songs were bouncy and effer- own mind-that the George Michael era was over. Maybe cian. He didn't have to wait long for it either. In 1987, vescent, George Michael was a pretty boy with a swarthy he wanted it to be over. "Faith," his first solo album, was a wide baby face, and the girls thrashed and screamed. In It takes something more-a superhuman drive-to sus- critical/commercial/cultural smash, a record that blew this case, though, the teen-pop puppet master was tain a heightened career over the decades, the way that away any doubts as to whether he was a truly ambitious George Michael too. He wrote and produced the songs Madonna has (or that Prince did). On his rare later solo and elevated pop-musical artist. It was his grown-up on "Make It Big," a creative feat that marked him as a pop albums, like "Older," Michael's songwriting may on some statement (made at the age of 24), his English-boy ver- prodigy. Yet we still tend to put those songs in a throw- level have "matured," but it lost its pop command. A sion of a DIY-in-the-studio Prince album, his ritual of away box marked "Pop It's Embarrassing To Admit You song like "Fastlove" was the rare exception, and even graduation into the big leagues of the funk-pop sublime. Take Totally Seriously." That judgment, with 30 years' that seemed, more than not, an over-produced echo of And yet...the old image hung around. He still wasn't hindsight, now looks far too easy, too dismissive, too glories past. Each time, it was as if he was coming out of quite on that Madonna/Prince/Michael Jackson level. automatic, too snobbish, too untrue to the joys embed- retirement and didn't have his heart in it. The moment I'll Maybe that was because in his videos (this was the era ded in George Michael's exuberant gift for melody, and when how you looked on MTV was half of who you in his smooth-as-silk soaring angel's croon. were), it was clear that Michael was still obsessed with micro-managing how he came across. To a degree, the Jingle of love fussiness of his presentation undercut the image he was Take a song that's the clear Exhibit A of what I'm talk- now trying to present. The '80s were the high era of ing about: "Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go." No, it's not manly stubble, but no one ever had stubble like George "When Doves Cry" or "A Day in the Life." It's a jingle of Michael in the videos for "Faith" or "I Want Your Sex": It love, a ditty. Thirty years ago, I would never have defend- was like a sculpted charcoal shadow that had been air- ed it (much). Yet I wonder if anyone has had an experi- brushed on. His too-perfect version of too-rough-to-care ence like this one. "Wake Me Up" has been used in many facial hair was of a piece with his too-shiny leather jacket movies, and earlier this year it was used-as a joke-to (marked with the word Revenge) that looked like a pro- accompany a flashback in "Zoolander 2," during which motional collaboration between Kenneth Anger and Derek Zoolander remembers his carefree younger days Members Only; his too meticulously torn jeans; his too (before a car crash puts an abrupt end to the memory). A perfectly frosted hair; his too-tough aviator sunglasses. true confession: I'm sitting there watching the movie, in In those videos, Michael was working so hard to make us a theater with about five other people in it, and that Genny Di Virgilio shows a figurine of British musician take him seriously that he still kept a lot of folks from unmistakable blast of "Jitterbug!" comes on the sound- George Michael in his artisan shop specializing in nativity taking him seriously. track, it's supposed to sound dippy as hell, and all I can scene's figurines, in Naples, southern Italy. When I heard the news of his death, the first thing I think is "This song f---in' kicks!" It cartwheels right did was to reach for the song that, over the years, I've through your defenses. I'm supposed to add, of course, come to believe is Michael's most incandescent track: that it's a "guilty pleasure," but what does the "guilt" "Freedom '90." At the time, it was a song that was hard even mean anymore? It's just a tic. not to experience through the video: those fashion Other songs from that period need less defense. models lip-synching to Michael's voice (whatever that We've all just finished listening to "Last Christmas" two meant), the Revenge jacket set ablaze, the whole teasing dozen times over the past three weeks, and each time I significance of it-his "rejection" of the image-making hear it I can never get over what a supremely tender machinery of pop stardom, the underlying message of song it is, and how gorgeously George Michael sings it, Mourning fans have put down flowers and letters outside the home the lyrics "I think there's something you should know, I with a voice that seems lit from within. "Everything She of British musician George Michael in London. think it's time I stopped the show. There's something Wants" is a cynical moody classic, like the guy version of deep inside of me, there's someone I forgot to be." "Smooth Operator," and though "Careless Whisper" does- Whether or not Michael intended those words as a sly n't achieve the sheer rapture of melody that Michael remember George Michael most by is his March 23, 1991 signal of his sexuality, it certainly sounds that way now. broke through to three years later in "Father Figure," its in-concert cover rendition of "Don't Let the Sun Go sentimental sadness is indelible. The track from "Make It Down on Me," the one where Elton John joins him Rockier vibe Big" that may most spectacularly confirm Michael's onstage at Wembley Arena halfway through. (The two Yet whatever he felt trapped in (the corporation of songwriting and producing gifts is "Freedom," with its first performed the song together at Live Aid in 1985.) pop, the fashion-mall rough-trade rebel imagery of his exhilarating, reconfigured Motown groove and its plea It's a slow-burn performance that positively glows with own devising, the agony of a hidden existence), the for fidelity ("I don't want your freedom, I don't want to emotion, delectably smooth on the surface yet suffused sound of "Freedom '90" channels a liberation as play around") that, in hindsight, contained, at least in with what now seems a lifetime of longing, love, and thrilling as any in the history of pop. It's a rockier vibe coded fashion, one of Michael's earliest (clandestine) loss. If I had to point to the single greatest achievement than he usually laid down-a propulsive, rollicking acknowledgments of-and counterreactions to-the proud of George Michael's career, apart from his creation of groove that sweeps the listener along like a gospel riv- sexuality of gay culture. "Freedom '90," I might say that it's the sheer rapt out- er, the sound built around crystalline piano chords that pouring of his performance of this song-and in particu- are woven right into the center of the mix, the way they Rare exception lar, near the end, the godly way that he takes flight into were in mid-period Rolling Stones ("Sympathy for the When a pop star is a major sex symbol, it can seem as the line "I'd just allow a fragment of your life...to wander Devil," "Loving Cup"). It's one of those songs, like if he's ruling the world, but once he gets a little older free." That was a major dimension of George Michael's Dylan's "Absolutely Sweet Marie," where the more it and turns his back on that side of himself, it's like a magi- quest-to wander free-and it was part of the lure of his goes on, the more addicted you get to it. After the exu- cal suit of clothing he's decided to leave on the hanger; music, which sings and pulses with a freedom it would berance of the early Wham! songs and the meticulous he becomes just another person. In 1991, I was invited to be foolish to deny, or resist. — Reuters dance-pop passion of "Faith," "Freedom '90" seemed to a generic movie premiere party (for "A League of Their erupt out of some new dimension of George Michael. It Own"), and at one point I glanced to the side and was his exhilarating goodbye to the '80s, and no one noticed, to my shock, that David Lee Roth was standing This file photo taken on May 25, 2007 shows pop singer could have guessed that the decade he was now treat- there, all by himself, like someone who'd been a rock star George Michael performing on stage in Bratislava during ing as a trap would remain his one true contained peri- about a hundred years ago. His days of gigolo prancing his concert as part of his European Tour. od of pop glory. weren't that far behind him, but hardly anyone noticed