This is the era of plastic checker bowler hats and beach balls on TOTP and I suspect that Motown signified, for many, a time before music felt it had to challenge its audience. I wonder if Motown seemed like a way of retrieving ‘good-time party music’ from the solemnity and swagger of stadium rock, and the intelligence and challenge of new pop. And we’re about to head into more direct Motown revivals, but that’s for later. We’ve already discussed Phil Collins’s ‘You Can’t Hurry Love’ and The Jam’s ‘Town Called Malice’, but there’s a Supremes bounce to ‘Wake Me Up Before You Go Go’. Ah well.įreedom is a very likeable song and was very much of its time in that Motown revival way. All of these seem so unlikely I wonder if I spent six months of 1985 in political fantasy land.
I also remember Bruce Springsteen donating money to the NUM at the same time and The Smiths doing a Red Wedge gig. Tom may mock their political affiliations, but I have a vague memory of Wham! playing a benefit gig for the striking miners. But to get to the hurt you have to fight your way through all the bunting he’s draped the track in, which turns it into something bouncier and frothier, an effectively upbeat song that pulls its emotional punch. Even lying would be better: “If you loved me baby you’d deny it / But you laugh and tell me I should try it” is one of the more hangdog lines in pop, and Michael’s performance hits the right note of petulance, bafflement and hurt. George wants to be exclusive, his girl thinks otherwise, and what really stings isn’t even the other boys, it’s the way she mocks him for missing out. They’re pointlessly celebratory, and it’s not like George has much to celebrate here.Īt its centre the track’s a flip on a “Men Are From Mars” caricature of gender relations, and a case study in fidelity as game theory. In fact a three-minute edit of “Freedom” would be comfortably my favourite Wham! record: those post-chorus cheerleading “Do! Do! Do!”s might be first against the wall. That wouldn’t matter a whit – they’re pleasant to listen to, after all – except that there’s a tight, wounded song in “Freedom” which might have been better served by brevity. The cascading “I don’t want your / I don’t want your” vocals and guitar work at the end are sheer embellishment. A fine thing to be doing, except this is almost twice as long as many Motown hits and it doesn’t use the extra space to any great effect. Just as with “Careless Whisper”, “Freedom” finds George Michael working his way through a form: the upbeat, Tamla-style soul stomper.
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