Wham! followed up "Young Guns (Go for It)" with a reissue of "Wham Rap (Enjoy What You Do)", " Bad Boys" and " Club Tropicana". By the end of 1983, Wham! were competing against pop rivals Culture Club and Duran Duran as one of Britain's biggest pop acts. Their debut album Fantastic spent two weeks at No. 1 in the UK album charts in 1983, but the album achieved only modest success in the US. [19] Legal disputes with Innervision [ edit ] Now signed to Epic Records, except in the US and a few other countries on Epic's sister label Columbia Records, Wham! returned in 1984 with a new album and an updated pop image. These changes helped to propel Wham!'s next single, " Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go", into the top ten of several countries around the world. It became their first US and UK No. 1 single, accompanied by a video of the duo with Pepsi and Shirlie, all wearing Katharine Hamnett T-shirts with the slogans "CHOOSE LIFE" and "GO GO". [22] Sibbles, Emma (18 June 2009). "Get it off your chest: The slogan T-shirt has a noble history". The Guardian . Retrieved 17 June 2019. Initially the pair wrote songs such as " Wham Rap (Enjoy What You Do)" and " Club Tropicana" together, but part way through the recording of their debut album Fantastic, the pair agreed that Michael was the stronger songwriter, and would take creative control. [14] Still teenagers, they promoted themselves as hedonistic youngsters, proud to live a carefree life without work or commitment. This was reflected in their earliest singles which, part-parody, part-social comment, briefly earned Wham! a reputation as a dance protest group. The song, which had been tentatively released in June 1982 when Wham! were unknown, failed to make any impact and was later re-issued in January 1983 after the duo had achieved their breakthrough with " Young Guns (Go for It!)". The single subsequently reached No. 8 on the UK Singles Chart, the second release of four hits from Wham!'s debut album Fantastic.

Herbert, E. (2017). George Michael - The Life: 1963-2016: The Man, The Legend, The Music. John Blake Publishing. p.24. ISBN 978-1-78606-471-4 . Retrieved 17 June 2019.Wham! reunion rumours quashed by George Michael". ITV News. 20 June 2012 . Retrieved 29 December 2012. As with Wham!, you occasionally get the feeling that the still publicly closeted Michael was trying to alert fans to the truth about his sexuality: “I think there’s something you should know, I think it’s time I stopped the show, there’s something deep inside of me, there’s someone I forgot to be,” offers Freedom! ’90.

The song was Wham!'s first hit, achieved with help from the BBC music programme Top of the Pops, which invited Wham! on to the show as a last-minute replacement for another act which had pulled out. The producer of Top of the Pops Michael Hurll, had seen them on another programme, Saturday Superstore. [2] Composition [ edit ] After the boys stomp around in a state of delirium, they step into a Rolls Royce, getting changed into their pop star outfits before attending a photoshoot. There was attention-stoking controversy in the shape of I Want Your Sex (anyone looking for evidence of how times have changed might alight on the fact that in 1987, not only was its video banned, some TV and radio presenters refused to even mention the song’s title). British director Lindsay Anderson was engaged to accompany Wham! to China and make a documentary film about the visit. Anderson called his one-hour and 18 minute film If You Were There.

Because of their Top Of The Pops performance promoting the single, it wasn't long before both George and Andrew joined the rich and famous themselves. As it turned out, those first impressions were wrong. Wham! were a noticeably smarter and more complex band than their brash front suggested. Wham Rap was a song not so much about indifference to unemployment as resilience in the face of it. Steele, Robert Careless Whispers: The Life & Career of George Michael Omnibus Press, 2011. Retrieved 8 January 2016.