This category’s title is horribly inappropriate given today’s subject.

I didn’t take too much to Wham! Being a schoolteacher relatively new to the game in the early 1980s it was a mystery to me why certain acts inspired adolescent devotion. From the perspective of thirty years later this frothy concoction is more understandable. It exudes the exuberance of youth.

Wham!: Freedom

A more thoughtful sound soon appeared though. I heard Michael accorded Andrew Ridgley a writing credit on the song below despite him not being involved. The royalties have stood Ridgley in good stead ever since. Only one among Michael’s many charitable acts.

George Michael: Careless Whisper

Georgios Kyriacos Panayiotou (George Michael:) 25/6/1963 – 25/12 /2016. So it goes.

I leave here for five minutes (well, two days, but I had good reasons; the 24^th is my birthday and yesterday was Christmas) and two more rock stars have departed this world.

I had barely begun to think about what song I would mark Rick Parfitt‘s passing with when the news came of George Michael‘s death.

Parfitt was more my era but, unlike some, Status Quo had staying power: as did George Michael.

It’s been some year.

And it’s not over yet.