Faith

I'm Dylan Stone.

Now, Faith was George Michael's first solo album and second single as a solo artist.

He was previously a member of the pop duo Wham and was trying to change his image so he would appeal to a more adult audience and be taken seriously as an artist, something that wasn't easy after hit singles like Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go and I'm Your Man.

In the video, he appeared in Stubble, A Biker Jacket, and Strategically Torn Levi's.

Obviously, it turned out well.

Here's George Michael.

This is called Faith.

Vinyl on Chrome.

It got me into Public Enemy.

And he also really liked George Michael's Faith.

Yeah.

The song rather than his...

Which,

you know, he was forced out, but yeah.

Three years after Faith, which sold 25 million copies.

And Faith was written and produced by George Michael, which I didn't realise.

Yes, they don't write songs like that anymore.

Actually, when I was chatting with Don McLean last night, just to drop a name in here, because he's doing a tour of Australia coming up next month that I'll tell you more about too, and he was saying that he hates the music of today and that he's written his last album, he's never going to do another album because they just don't write songs like...

He used to.

Yeah.

So I think that's terribly dangerous.

It's true.

Although I have to say that Derek Pellicci, who was the original drummer for Little River Band, has just put out an album of his own where he's written all the songs and he's got AI to play all the music.

And the album is fantastic.

Made it all the way to number two on the bilbs.

The only album that stood in its way from making it to the top was George Michael's Faith.

I bet George Michael would stretch all four members of Poison if they were like locked in a cell together.

I'm telling you, George Michael probably had a hanger.

Yeah, it came out in 1987.

It was on the Faith album, and the song was number one on the US Billboard Hot 100.

This song is interesting.

It's an interesting choice because, as James mentioned when he was on the podcast with Shelley, you know, sometimes they just take a song because the title of it sounds good and kind of works, which it obviously does work for this episode where Emma's trying to find her real father.

Now-

Yeah, so, so Mark was talking about the George Michael leather jacket from the "Faith" video-

Yes

... that he brought into the studio-

We had in the studio this week, the actual-

Yeah

... jacket that George Michael wore in the "Faith" video.

So they weren't sure about it because they didn't...

Not my finest moment, no.

So, um, this was from New Edition's fifth studio album, called Heart Break.

Uh, number eight here, peaks at number seven.

Was a number two hit on the Black singles chart.

Right.

What's gonna happen to New Edition? They invite, uh, a new guy in, but wait, was he...

Yeah, he was on this album, I think.

Who, Bobby?

I mean, a lot of things pop out in 87, and you can go look at all the number ones from that year.

George Michael has his Faith album.

I mean, so 86 feels like it got sandwiched into a spot where it's like, okay, we got some stuff here.

Yeah, one of the categories I use to help me score these things, because I have a hard time deciding in what year, is they call it genre diversity.

In 1990, George Michael released Listen Without Prejudice, Volume 1.

This was a somber, acoustic-heavy pivot away from his debut album, Faith.

And he was famous on this one for refusing to appear on the cover or also in its music videos.

Won Best British Album at the 1991 Brit Awards, hit number one in the UK, number two in America.

It came at this really pivotal part of his solo career where he'd already got one album under his belt, and he was exploring who he wanted to be as an artist.

But in the famous music video, the film clip shows him lighting the leather jacket from Faith on fire, from the Faith album, which was his first big solo album.

All we have to do now is to take these lies.

And make them true somehow.

But then it's so meta because the song Faith opens up with the organ playing a bit of Freedom '84, which was from his boy band Wham! days.

[organ music] We give Madonna credit for being queen of reinvention, but George was the queen of reinvention as well.

And it's that very queer notion of he is in control of who you want to perceive him as at any point in time.