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According to a recent article in The New York Times, cottage cheese, the lumpy dairy product embraced by my mother’s generation as a necessary component of any reducing diet, is enjoying a bump in popularity. This is due in part to members of the online platform TikTok pairing it with yellow mustard to create a healthy alternative to calorie-laden dips containing either sour cream, cream cheese or both.
Something else cheesy from the past that is having some time in the spotlight again is the 1980s pop group Wham!
Several months ago the group’s signature song “Wake Me Up Before You Go Go” was featured in a national commercial for Volkswagen. Then last week a documentary about the group debuted on Netflix.
“Wham!” tells the story of duo Andrew Ridgeley and George Michael’s epic rise to fame, first in their native United Kingdom and then worldwide. In four short years they went from playing gigs in greasy spoons to selling out stadiums.
Ridgeley and Michael met in school. Michael was an awkward teen of Greek extract with a slightly chubby face and a pair of thick glasses. Ridgeley was a good looking lad with Egyptian roots and a trendy post-punk look. They became instant best friends and soon began writing songs together.
Wham! achieved moderate success in the UK with their debut album “Fantastic” after appearing on the popular BBC show “Top of the Pops.” Here in the U.S. they were relatively unknown except to those of us who didn’t have MTV.
I may have discussed this before, but for a long time, MTV wasn’t available in the Rockbridge area unless your family had satellite TV. Those of us city dwellers who relied on cable to see music videos on TV had to watch “Friday Night Videos” on NBC or “Night Tracks” on TBS on Friday and Saturday nights. MTV had exclusive rights to most of the popular videos so the MTV wannabes often showed videos by bands no one had ever heard of. Wham! fell under that category.
Actually in the beginning, Wham! was known as Wham! UK because, believe it or not, there was another band bearing the Wham! name at the time in the U.S.
The first Wham! video I remember seeing was “Bad Boys.” In the video Ridgeley and Michael wear studded black leather jackets and blue jeans. I always thought they looked like they were on their way to audition for a Village People tribute band.
Wham! retooled its image for the pastel-mad mid-1980s and in 1984 came out with the monster hit “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go,” which went to number one in both the UK and the U.S. In the video, Ridgeley and Michael are decked out in day-glo colors as they clap, sing and dance their way through one of the most iconic music videos of its time.
After that there was no stopping Wham! They even ditched the UK suffix because the other band named Wham! woke up and wentwent away.
My best friend Stephanie was a major Wham! fan and I spent many a day watching the compilation of Wham! videos she had on VHS. She and her cousin Tish would critique the video for “Last Christmas” in particular.
The music video for “Last Christmas” takes place at a snowy Swiss ski resort. Michael and Ridgeley play around in the snow with their friends and decorate a chalet for the holidays. There’s an extended scene in which everyone sits at a dinner table drinking wine. In the Netflix documentary it was revealed that the video director kept the wine glasses full so the on camera tipsy antics of Michael, Ridgeley and company were fueled by real booze.
Michael penned “Last Christmas” hoping that it would become a holiday classic. It never went to number one in Michael’s lifetime, stalled at number two on the British charts behind Band Aid’s “Do They Know It’s Christmas?”
Wham! sold 30 million records worldwide between 1982 and 1986. They became the first western pop group to perform in communist China. Eventually it became apparent that George Michael was the group’s Diana Ross. Bandmate Andrew Ridgeley was fine with this. He had been along for the ride but had no place in his best mate’s rise to hip-shaking super stardom. He knew he would just be in the way.
Wham! performed its last concert at London’s Wembley Stadium. At the close of the concert, Michael whispered to Ridgeley, “I couldn’t have done this without you.”
Michael went on to a very successful solo career. Ridgeley tried his hand at racing cars, making his own records, and acting. For the most part he has lived a life out of the public eye, resurfacing every once in a while to talk about Wham! and “Yog,” his nickname for his former music partner and forever friend George Michael.
George Michael had known he was gay from an early age. His sexuality wasn’t made public during the period of Wham! mania. That would have been a career killer then. The man who sang “Freedom” wasn’t free to live his own true self. In the late 1990s, he finally came out. In his later years he was in a relationship with a man named Fadi Fawaz, who found George Michael dead on Dec. 25, 2016.
I remember where I was when I heard the news. My best friend Stephanie was visiting her mom and invited me to Christmas dinner at her childhood home. We were seated at her dining room table elegantly decorated with holiday ornaments while we finished up a fine feast and sipped wine. The floor to ceiling windows darkened behind us as day gave way to evening. It was a scene straight out of the video for “Last Christmas.” Stephanie looked at her phone and gasped. She cried out, “Oh no! George Michael!” She didn’t have to say anything else.
A band like Wham! was just what was needed in the early to mid-1980s. At a time when AIDS was decimating lives and nuclear arms proliferation was on the rise, it was a scary time to be alive. But groups like Wham! made things appear a little less terrifying with catchy pop chart toppers that at one point seemed to unite the world on a global dance floor if even for just a short time.
