Remembering a pop superstar who changed the game
One of my very first jobs in high school was working as a stock clerk for supermarket. Twice a week, there was a big “truck delivery” that needed to be sorted into stacks for each section of the store. In addition, the big cardboard boxes all the merchandise came in had to be cut open.
Being a teenager, I was relegated to "carry cut-open boxes to the appropriate stack" duty while an older clerk, wielding a box cutter like a master sushi chef, handled the slicing duties.
During the winter of 1984, the head cutter would play three cassettes on his boombox over and over again, timing his cuts to the beat of the songs. One of those albums was WHAM's Make It Big. And to this day, I cannot hear "Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go", "Careless Whisper", "Freedom" or "Everything She Wants" without thinking about groceries.
Yeah, we all have weird associations with music, especially the music we listened to in our teens when all music seemed so much more important than just about anything. But there was more to it than just groceries; during that winter I learned, basically through musical osmosis, what it takes to write and create a really good song.
Not a "pop" song, though the four I mentioned were extremely popular (and the album itself has sold well in excess of seven million copies worldwide), but a really "good" song. For these songs were the creation of one of the most sublimely talented musicians to come out of the early-'80s: George Michael.
So when I heard the news over the weekend that George had passed on unexpectedly, it hit me harder than I had expected. Prince's death earlier this year was hard to take, and I'm still not over the loss of David Bowie. But George was personal. The endless listenings on Make It Big started me on a musical path of appreciation of craftsmanship that forced me to look beyond my musical comfort zone.
George Michael made me a fan of good music. And for that alone, I will never forget him. Or his music.