Last night, with nothing in particular that I was keen to watch, but with not enough brain power left to do much reading, I scrolled through Netflix and came upon Wham! the documentary about Wham! (the band) (there’s going to be some weird punctuation here, just relax and enjoy the exclamation marks.)
I am in my forties, which means that I came of age smack in the middle of Wham! mania. The album that catapulted them to worldwide fame, Make It Big, came out when I was nine years old. Like many nine-year-olds, I was just becoming interested in pop music, and there was Wham!, ready with the perfect pop hits for kids (and adults).
I didn’t realize, until I watched the documentary, that Wham! only ever released two albums. It seems like such a small number for their outsize presence in music over the last four decades. Of course, there was also George Michael’s solo career. most notably his record Faith, a perfect, horny pop album that arrived just in time for my friends and I to be perfect, horny preteens. It seems so innocent when I listen to it now, even the song “I Want Your Sex” which was banned at our middle-school dances. Oh George, the world has gotten so much more scandalous in the years since you cooed into my walkman’s headphones about “not needing no bible”. And to be honest a bible doesn’t seem like a common sex accessory, but maybe I’m doin it wrong.
(I tried to find a photo of me in my Make It Big t-shirt that I bought with my allowance during my first ever trip to the mall with friends, but alas there do not seem to be any photos of this shirt at all. But, this is me in my Wham! era, with pink high tops, acid washed jeans, a Swatch, and carefully curled hair.)
There were a lot of wonderful revelations in the documentary and I really urge you to watch it if you have even a passing interest in the band. The story that we’ve been told a million times about jealousy and pain in duos where one person becomes more famous than the other, just never arrives here. These dudes loved each other. They had a wonderful friendship. And the doc ends when the band ends, so we skip all of George Michael’s later scandal, arrests, and his eventual death. The documentary is, as one reviewer said, “Good vibes only.”
So let’s talk about good vibes, and how their importance in music, books, and other media is minimized.
One of the quotes from the documentary that really stood out to me came when Geroge Michael was talking about “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go”. He’d been the one to write the song, sing it, and produce it and then- as we all know from our place here in the future- it became a monster hit. Even my kids, born three decades after its release, know this song and love it. But when Geroge Michael remembers that era, he remembers people making fun of him for the song, industry people and music fans “taking the piss” because it was the poppiest of pop songs written by a twenty year old with wild fashion sense.
“If I was listening to someone singing that now, and I knew that they’d written it, produced it, and sung it, I wouldn’t be taking the piss out of them because they wore terrible clothes, you know what I’m saying? For a fucking twenty year old! Why the fuck would they be taking the piss out of me?”
Why the fuck, indeed? Why is it widely acceptable to dismiss and mock things like pop music (or sitcoms or action movies or romance novels) that bring people joy? Sure, there are terrible pop songs and awful action movies and rotten romance novels. But I’ve also read prize-winning literary fiction that I hated and heard complex music that did not move me at all. It’s not as though it’s easy to succeed within popular culture, despite what people (like the guy who told me it must have been “easy” for me to get a book deal because I was writing ‘popular’ books) might think. Things that gain attention for bringing people joy are not necessarily a walk in the park to create. I certainly couldn’t have written, sang, and produced “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go” when I was twenty years old. Hell, I couldn’t do it now.
I heard an interview with best-selling romance novelist Emily Henry not long ago where she talked about how, when she senses that someone she’s speaking with regards her career as “silly” she has the immediate inclination to lean into it, rather than trying to defend herself or describe her work in a way that might garner more respect. I love this strategy. When someone asks me what kind of book I wrote, I up my vocal volume a bit and announce “IT’S A ROMANCE NOVEL”. It’s a dare. Come at me, bro. If people aren’t going to respect pop music, genre fiction, and anything else “fluffy” or “silly”, then I’m very sad for them. It’s like the Pete Holmes comedy bit about being an “easy laugh”. Who wants to be a “hard laugh” anyway? I feel sorry for those people. I wish them good vibes only.
July 2023 Songs
My favourite George Michael song ever is Freedom! ‘90. It is just a total banger, as someone younger than me would say. And now that I know more about his history the lyrics are more meaningful.
The first Freedom is also very good.
In my post-documentary deep internet research dive I learned the Andrew Ridgeley was in a twenty-five year relationship with Keren Woodward from Bananarama, which is what I think people are talking about when they say “couple goals”.
July 2023 Feelings
Full disclosure: I read Kevin Dunn’s middle-grade novel Vicious Is My Middle Name before it was published, because he is a friend of mine. I even blurbed it for him. I wouldn’t have done that if I didn’t like it, so you can believe me when I say it’s great. But you don’t even have to take my word for it because I know a middle-school child (my ten-year-old son) who absolutely LOVED this and will tell anyone who will listen how great it is. The book tells the story of Sydney Vicious Talcott, a punky New York teen, who moves to a small town in North Carolina and immediately has trouble fitting in. There’s so much to like about this book- Sydney’s pen pal letters from the lead singer of one of her favourite indie punk bands, the local music shop she discovers, the secretly-punk librarian at her school- but the thing I loved most about this was Sydney’s growth as a person. She is a victim of bullying at school, but she also is careless with the feelings of her new friends and sometimes naive in her attempts at social justice activism. As readers we are rooting for Sydney but are also aware that she has a lot to learn. This is a warm, fun, music-infused book that is well worth seeking out for yourself or for the young people in your life.
Asking for a Friend by Kerry Clare isn’t out until September, but I tore through my advance reader’s copy and loved it so much I want to encourage everyone to preorder it ASAP. This novel spans decades in the lives of Jess and Clara, two friends who meet in their university dorm and move through the ups and downs of friendship as they graduate, find partners, have children, and deal with the milestones of adulthood. The story is so beautifully told and rang so true to me. The characters are flawed and complex, neither is always right or always wrong. Their conversations feel authentic regardless of what stage of life they are in. The focus on the friendship and the deft, economical writing in this book made me think of Sally Rooney, if she were to write a book set in late 90s/early 2000s Toronto. Definitely recommend this.
Thanks for reading! See you next month.
J.W.
Instagram : @JenniferWhitefordWrites
Razorcake columns, reviews, interviews etc
My debut romance novel, MAKE ME A MIXTAPE is coming from Doubleday in 2024.