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“Wham!” – New documentary about the pop sensation of the 80s
Looking back: George Michael and Andrew Ridgeley are Wham! photo
© Cr. Courtesy of Netflix © 2023/dpa
Before George Michael became a superstar as a solo artist, he and the duo Wham! for a sensation. His school friend and bandmate Andrew Ridgeley has opened the archive for a new Netflix documentary.
In 1981 school friends Andrew John Ridgeley and Georgios Kyriacos founded Panayiotou alias George Michael formed a band in the English town of Bushey near London. The duo sparked global hype soon after: Wham! were only active together for a few years, but their influence on pop culture continues to this day. A little belatedly, Ridgeley is celebrating Wham!’s 40th anniversary with a new singles box set and documentary, which will be available to stream on Netflix from Wednesday (July 5).
The documentary just “Wham!” titled, looks back on the years from 1981 to 1986 in which the duo had hit after hit. “Wake Me Up (Before You Go-Go)” and “Careless Whisper” are just as immortal as the Christmas classic “Last Christmas”. Ridgeley has opened his archive – or that of his mother – with countless photos and video recordings from the time. His memories and older stories about George Michael, who died in 2016, can be heard from the off.
“I have become aware that there is still public interest in Wham!” says Ridgeley (60) in an interview with the German Press Agency in London. “And if we were touring in this digital, globally connected era, it would be all over Instagram, on Tiktok. You would see us backstage.” Four decades later, Ridgeley is catching up. The documentary contains many scenes that might have gone viral if social media had existed back then. By the way, there is now also a Wham! Tiktok channel.
A slow start
Before Wham! first successes, it was a lot of work. Their first single “Wham Rap! (Enjoy What You Do)” was a flop in 1982. Ironically, George Michael sings – or raps – about the perks of living unemployed at the expense of the state. Ridgeley and Michael trundled through countless bars and clubs, where the audience was not only friendly to them. But it all paid off. In 1983, after the breakthrough, the song that now embarrasses Ridgeley became a hit.
The 90-minute documentary hardly goes into depth. It is learned that George Michael is said to have revealed his homosexuality to his friend and bandmate after the video shoot for “Club Tropicana” in Ibiza. However, it remains unclear how he felt about marketing it as a sex symbol of female desire. Ridgeley admits his dissatisfaction at the time that Michael was doing the songwriting alone, and Michael says it was quickly sorted out. However, this will not be dealt with in any more detail.
Nostalgic review
So Wham! fans and pop connoisseurs will hardly find out anything new. Andrew Ridgeley had something else in mind anyway. “I had the feeling that many young people didn’t know the story,” he says in a dpa interview. “They know “Wake Me Up (Before You Go-Go)” or “Club Tropicana” but not the story of two boys who met in school and then became one of the biggest bands of the time.”
As a nostalgic review, the Netflix documentation is quite successful. With the many private photos, amateur recordings and recordings from TV interviews and programs such as “Top Of The Pops”, the 90 minutes are an entertaining fast run through a grandiose decade of pop music. “Wham!” focuses on the brief era of a band that was once laughed at and revered in equal measure, but whose music has stood the test of time.