I would like to start talking about this album precisely from the chosen title: Listen Without Prejudice.
As a listener, I admit that I approached Georgios's tracks with skepticism.
His image, indissolubly linked to the Wham! brand and to a blatantly trendy advertising, has always made me underestimate the value of his works; I was grossly mistaken and that title is there to remind me of it.
George Michael released in an essential manner. Between one album and another (five official solo records), there are years lived with ups and downs, years of considered work. Nothing is left to chance.
Faith sold a lot, and so much energy was required that Michael wanted to distance himself from the more popular than artistic image that the public consciousness had of him. For the next project, he decided not to even appear in the music videos. The tensions related to sales, which were fewer than those of Faith, resulted in a legal battle where the singer accused Sony of lack of support for the album. How much did Listen Without Prejudice sell? Eight million copies worldwide, including two in America.
That Vol.1 was indeed there to announce the release of a second album with a character more extrovert than the first, which, however, was never published.
Listen Without Prejudice is an album of ten tracks, an album that presents itself with a not very colorful cover and with a darkness at the background which, however, is not an end in itself as it reassures the listener. The most serene moments of the album are indeed only indices of hope but never of joy. Just rely on the sad Mother's Pride, which during the Gulf War was interpreted by many as an anthem of that mentioned hope.
The beach of Coney Island on the cover was immortalized by the famous photographer Arthur Fellig - known as Weegee - on a scorching summer afternoon in 1940. Naked City by John Zorn took their name precisely from one of his collections, as well as the snapshot of the murdered gangster they used as the cover of their first album. A huge crowd of bathers, which I believe signifies, in Michael's intentions, the feeling of being under pressure or nonetheless under the watchful eyes of an audience to whom to prove something.
The something to be proven is a sublime sound care (Praying For Time but also the sustained Soul Free which has something to do with Screamadelica). A tracklist without fillers. George Michael was also the arranger of his album, as usual.
The references are different, especially to the Stones. You Can't Always Get What You Want is cited in Waiting For That Day, which can be considered a tribute (Jagger and Richards are listed among the authors) but also the single Freedom! '90 is, in my opinion, an alternate version of Sympathy For The Devil. The theatrically epic quality of Michael's voice takes center stage in the crescendo of They Won't Go When I Go, a successful cover from Stevie Wonder who was inspired by Chopin in its composition.
The character is intimate, as already mentioned; folk and lounge traits imbued in tracks like Something To Save and Cowboys And Angels from someone who knows how to honor and exploit those traits to the fullest. The structure of Cowboys And Angels is fascinating; a song written about a love triangle and the absurdity of wanting what you can't have.
Journalist Alfred Soto wrote about how, in his opinion, the historical period of the HIV boom had determined a melancholic attitude in the homosexual artistic climate, found in several cases (for example, Behaviour by the Pet Shop Boys and, precisely, Listen Without Prejudice). According to the writer, it is not exactly the most rightful thing in the world to contextualize the melancholy of a work to private life particulars, but in the case of George Michael, personal events led to the creation of real gems that are also found in the subsequent Older.
They can be surmised, but they can also be assimilated and made one's own, the pains and concerns etched into Listen Without Prejudice.
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