Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I'd been out to a lot of people since 19. I wish to God it had happened then. I don't think I would have the same career - my ego might not have been satisfied in some areas - but I think I would have been a happier man.
I get along really well with [my father] now, but I had a terrible time with him in my teenage years. All we did was scream at each other, and when we weren't screaming at each other, we just wouldn't talk to each other.
In the years when HIV was a killer, any parent of an openly gay person was terrified. I knew my mother well enough that she would spend every day praying that I didn't come across that virus. She'd have worried like that.
I couldn't change anything without changing the end position, and I'm perfectly happy now. So whatever I feel in some sense may have been a mistake in the past is, in another sense, not a mistake, because it's left me here.
When Andrew [Ridgeley] first met my family, he heard my mom calling me "Yorgos." He just abbreviated it to Yog, and unfortunately it stuck. I hated it is a teenager. It was not the most glamorous-sounding name in the world.
Because of the media, the way the world is perceived is as a place where resources and time are running out. We're taught that you have to grab what you can before it's gone. It's almost as if there isn't time for compassion.
The '90s were a bit of a disaster for me in so many ways. On a personal level, I don't think I could have toured. Also, I had some physical problems with my back that are now sorted and I just wasn't in the right state of mind.
I'm 10-12 years into life as an out gay man, and I'm a different person. I think there are things about my journey that might be useful to other people, and coming up with a hit record on its own doesn't seem to be enough anymore.
[My father] was more than apprehensive. He didn't think I stood a chance in hell. He had no confidence in me whatsoever and was convinced that I was going to be coming to him for money when I was 40. We argued about it constantly.
I think part of it has got to be compensation, yes, for the fact that when I was a kid, I wasn't particularly attractive. But at the same time I don't remember ever thinking, Oh, my God, I'm such a mess; I'm the ugliest sod in the class.
[Tabloids] could call you a child molester, I suppose, but they just go for the two things they think people are most likely to believe and that will most offend yourself and your popularity. My skin hardened to all that stuff years ago.
Me, I don’t want any children, I don’t want responsibility. I am gay, I smoke weed and I do exactly what I want in my life because of my talent. I represent an ideal which others have had to let go and they blame me for that. Especially men.
It does bother me when they [tabloids] drag friends of mine into it and talk about them and lie about them. My friends have no part in it; they're not celebrities, so why should they have to accept the downside of celebrity? That worries me for a bit.
It's an incredibly limited sphere those tabloids have, isn't it? Basically, they can accuse people of being gay and they can accuse people of taking drugs, but they can't get any more sensational without entering into the realm of incredibly bad taste.
I don't know what age the people who review my concerts reached puberty, I don't know if people in America reach puberty a lot later than they do in England or something like that, but the majority of those people are in their late teens and early twenties.
People run on and off the stage, but usually they're removed before they get to me. It's not really frightening. There's always the possibility that someone's going to take a potshot at you; you take that risk when you perform in front of thousands of people.
I'm not stupid enough to think that I can deal with another 10 or 15 years of major exposure. I think that is the ultimate tragedy of fame... People who are simply out of control, who are lost. I've seen so many of them, and I don't want to be another cliche.
The press seemed to take some delight that I previously had a 'straight audience,' and set about trying to destroy that. And I think some men were frustrated that their girlfriends wouldn't let go of the idea that George Michael just hadn't found the 'right girl.'
Satire is used for political purposes all the time, but obviously there's a time and a place. I think in the current climate, it can be very difficult to speak your mind, but sometimes, I believe, we're all in danger and I think this discussion needs to be widened.
The only difficulty is that I'm playing to two audiences, and it's too bad the noise detracts from the show, because it's a great show. I've seen my own self out there, and it's a very good musical show. Sometimes the show gets lost in the hysteria and sometimes it doesn't.
When I open my mouth and sing, the truth comes out. When I write, the truth comes out. I can't lie. That, I think, is one of the strongest elements of my music. When people talk about my writing as though I'm doing it from an accountant's perspective, it really pisses me off.
You'd be surprised how young 25-year-old girls can sound when they want to scream. It isn't that young an audience, and it really frustrates me when I read the word "prepubescent" in my reviews. Even the ones that started following me with Wham! are in their late teens by now.
Basically I see that song as a bunch of images which I threw together to represent the fact that I was seeing one girl and then I started seeing another, and it was just the guilt in between those two periods. The ballads I've written since have been about things that really hurt me.
It's quite simple: I managed it by doing away with Wham!'s duo image. Obviously, the way I looked changed and that helped a little, but I still have a very pop image. It's a very video-friendly image. I find it a lot more real. It's a lot closer to who I am than the whole Wham! thing.
In the rest of the world we had had two albums that were successful, so those two albums' hits and this new four-single package made up an album called Wham! The Final, which is basically greatest hits. We couldn't have done a greatest hits over here, because we'd only done one hit album.
I had been obsessed with insects and creepy-crawlies: I used to get up at five o'clock in the morning and go out into this field behind our garden and collect insects before everyone else got up, and suddenly, all I wanted to know about was music. It just seemed a very, very strange thing.
I realised those things my ego needed - fame and success - were going to make me terribly unhappy. So I wrenched myself away from that. I had to. I had to walk away from America and say goodbye to the biggest part of my career because I knew, otherwise, my demons would get the better of me.
I'm perfectly happy to admit that insecurity. It doesn't bother me. It's there, just the same as the color of my eyes is there. I'm never going to get rid of it. I'm not going to wake up one morning and really like the way I look, but as long as other people like the way I look, that's fine.
I was supposed to be a real Thatcherite. Just by dint of being a first-generation immigrant and having not had money, and then suddenly having it - and getting on planes and going to Ibiza and sitting around in thongs. But actually nothing I was writing or doing was even vaguely Thatcherite.
Andrew [Ridgeley] and I had demoed a couple of our songs very cheaply, and we weren't expecting any kind of record deal. We just walked around with our demo tape, trying to find someone to give us the money to demo properly. Instead of that, we got a record contract. It was just an incredibly lucky break.
That feels natural to me, singing in a small group of people I just can't do. You'll never hear me sing at a dinner table or anything, but this feels kinda natural. I've done it many, many times. So, and also, the pressure's off me cos I'm not singing on my own. I'm just doing a few harmonies with my stuffed nose.
The first sign of real obsession with music was with an old wind-up gramophone that mum had thrown out into the garage. My parents gave me three old 45s - two Supremes records and one Tom Jones record - and I used to come home from school literally every day, go out to the garage, wind this thing up, and play them.
I had very little fear about it, but basically, my straight friends talked me out of it. I think they thought as I was bisexual, there was no need to. But it's amazing how much more complicated it became because I didn't come out in the early days. I often wonder if my career would have taken a different path if I had.
It's strange. At some point in your career, the situation between yourself and the camera reverses. For a certain number of years, you court it and you need it, but ultimately, it needs you more, and it's a bit like a relationship. The minute that happens, it turns you off... and it does feel like it is taking something from you.
When I write and produce something, I know exactly how I want it to sound, and I have a very strong interpretation of it. I can't really think of anyone at the moment I'd particularly like to play a duet with. You never know, though, I might receive an offer tomorrow and say, "Yeah, that'd be great." But it's not something that's on my mind.
[Music From the Edge of Heaven] wasn't really an album at all. The band had made the decision to release an LP and then split up. We wanted to go out with a bang in Britain and the rest of the world by having a single that was four songs, not just one song. But we couldn't do that over here because we couldn't release a single without an album.
The years between leaving school and actually becoming an adult are very important years. You make a lot of choices as to the type of life you want to lead and what type of person you want to be. There were so many people who had opinions of me, a lot of them very unflattering, that it was hard to make up my mind about who I was supposed to be.
A lot of people felt that I was just tying that into the "I Want Your Sex" theme because of the AIDS thing and the prospect of the song's being banned. I thought it was a relevant point to make because of the AIDS thing. I wanted to write a song which sounded dirty but which was applicable to someone that I really cared about. That was my point.
George was the easy part. As for Michael, I had always liked the name, and my father's brother is named Michael. I thought it was a good idea because there are a lot of Greeks in England with the second name of Michael; as a child I had a Greek friend whose second name was Michael. It was like getting the name that I wanted without having to get rid of the Greek element.
I guess I was about 15. I wore glasses at the time, and I remember [first girlfriend] sitting on the floor at a party, one of those school parties where everyone is getting off with each other. I remember her taking my glasses off and saying something very complimentary about my eyes or whatever, and I was just so pissed off because I was convinced she was taking the piss out of me.
So you scream from behind your door, say what's mine is mine, and not yours I may have too much, but I'll take my chances Cause God's stopped keeping score And you cling to the things they sold you Didn't you cover your eyes when they told you that he can't come back Cause he has no children to come back for It so hard to learn, there's so much to hate Hanging on to hope when there is no hope to speak of And the wounded skies above say it's much too late So maybe we should all be praying for time