George Michael’s Careless Whisper at 40

If you cherish the memory of smooching to ‘Careless Whisper’ at the school disco in 1984, skip the next paragraph. The same applies if you’re a non-fan who rediscovered the song at a Guilty Pleasures night 30 years later and decided that, contrary to your original opinion, it’s actually a total corker (of course it is: the sumptuous opening sax riff, the ache in George Michael’s heartbroken voice, the oddly profound hookline, ‘Guilty feet have got no rhythm’).     

If that’s you, don’t read the next 182 words, because they reveal a disheartening truth: although ‘Careless Whisper’ – released 40 years today – was the song that enabled George Michael, pop star, to become George Michael, respected songwriter, he himself had little time for it. Or, at least, for its lyric – guilty feet and all. He considered them trite, and was bewildered by the track’s immense popularity (it was his biggest single by some way, selling six million copies and reaching No 1 in at least 10 countries). “It disappoints me that you can write a lyric very flippantly – and not a particularly good lyric – and it can mean so much to so many people”, he wrote in his 1990 memoir, Bare. And if that weren’t enough:  “‘Careless Whisper’ was not an integral part of my emotional development… I don’t feel that I possess it the way I possess other songs [such as ‘A Different Corner’]”. Ouch. In a 2009 interview with the Big Issue, he added, “I was only 17 and didn’t really know much about anything—and certainly nothing much about relationships”.

George had composed an enduring and much-loved song at an age when most people were worrying about their A-levels

Caroline Sullivan

It was a classic case of a songwriter being embarrassed by a youthful effort – but if he’d looked at it another way, he might have congratulated himself instead. He’d composed an enduring and much-loved song at an age when most people were worrying about their A-levels; not only that, the angst of it was purely teenage, which was one of its strengths. The melodrama of the infidelity storyline could only have come from a 17-year-old, and every young listener could appreciate the pain. Such songs never go out of fashion.

So what he considered ‘flippant’ by the time he wrote Bare, aged 27, was anything but to his fans, who related to its two-timing narrative, or simply enjoyed the sound of Michael finding his feet as a fast-maturing songwriter after two years of buoyant pop stardom with Wham! Perhaps Bare should have just conceded that once ‘Careless Whisper’ had been released – it was the second single from Wham!’s second album, Make it Big – it ceased to belong to him because millions of fans viewed it as ‘their’ song, so there was no point regretting it.

Moreover, millions continue to love it. In March 2023, ‘Careless Whisper’ reached one billion YouTube views, making it one of only a handful of 1980s songs to hit the ten-figure mark. As of July 2024 it’s chalked up another 200 million. It still has some way to go before it catches up with a-ha’s ‘Take on Me’ (1.9 bn), Michael Jackson’s ‘Billie Jean’ (1.6bn) and Rick Astley’s ‘Never Gonna Give You Up’ (1.5bn), but 1.2 billion isn’t bad.

In some territories, the single was credited to Wham! featuring George Michael, while others, including the UK, used Michael’s name alone. Either way, it was the first inkling for most fans that he would be moving on from his partnership with Andrew Ridgeley. It wouldn’t be immediately; there were still six Wham! singles to come – all credited simply to Wham! – and a 1986 compilation, The Final (in North America, it was called  Music from the Edge of Heaven and featured a reduced and rejigged tracklisting; both featured what would be Michael’s next solo release, ‘A Different Corner’). But to all intents, he’d been planning his eventual exit since recording ‘Careless Whisper’ in 1983. We know what happened next: five solo albums, huge success and a desperately sad curtailment when he was just 53.

It would be pleasant to think that even if he didn’t love the song, he at least had a soft spot for it because of what had happened when he recorded it. It might not have contributed to his emotional development, but it did represent the first time he’d thrown his musical weight around. And then some.  After working on it in July 1983 at Muscle Shoals Sound Studio, with the revered Jerry Wexler producing, he had the audacity to reject the song that emerged from their sessions.

Imagine that. Wexler: partner at Atlantic Records, producer of titans like Aretha Franklin and Dusty Springfield. Michael: up-and-coming songwriter from Hertfordshire, 20 years old. You’d have thought the kid from Radlett would have been intimidated by working with the man who invented the term ‘Rhythm & Blues’, but not a bit of it. Michael insisted on doing it again, this time producing it himself. It was the launchpad for the serious artistry that would follow. Pretty good for a ditty that his sisters, Melanie and Yioda, had dubbed ‘Tuneless Whisper’. 

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Originally titled ‘Guilty Feet’, the song had been around in demo form, along with ‘Wham Rap!’, since 1981. Michael and Ridgeley made a second demo in 1982, adding ‘Club Tropicana’, and it was this three-song demo tape that got them a deal with the newly launched Innervision Records (note: the myth that Ridgeley didn’t contribute to the song, and that Michael charitably gave him a co-writing credit so he would have an income from its royalties, is untrue. Ridgeley wrote the guitar line, and Michael was always quick to point that out). 

The idea for the song came to Michael on a bus, while he was travelling between his afternoon job as a cinema usher and his evening gig, DJing at the Bel Air, a Greek restaurant in north-west London (he said no job ever embarrassed him as much as his stint at the Bel Air, where he was stationed half-behind a pillar and played records for diners who hadn’t known that music would be part of the experience).

“Clear as day, I remember where l was sitting on the bus when I wrote that sax line”, he told Musician magazine in 1988. “I said, ‘Jesus, this is really good’. That sax line is pretty much the most important thing in my career, just those four bars”. The lyric also came easily: aged 16 and dating a girl called Helen, he began seeing a blond bombshell named Jane behind her back; the words recount the guilt he felt one night when he and Helen were out dancing, and he realised she knew about Jane.

Working on the song with Ridgeley, he knew in his bones that he’d composed something special. “I remember saying to him, ‘For Christ’s sake, there’s no way that no one is not gonna want to make money on this song’. We had no record contract, no publishing deal, nothing. And I told Andrew it was a number one song”.

It was Wham!’s manager, Simon Napier-Bell, who suggested Michael work with Jerry Wexler. Napier-Bell had sent him the ‘Careless Whisper’ demo, which Wexler loved; he replied, “Let’s record it at Muscle Shoals”.  Accordingly, Michael headed to Alabama. But he felt let down by their collaboration. “What was disappointing was not that it sounded like an old Jerry Wexler Atlantic record but that it sounded too middle of the road”, he wrote in Bare. “It just didn’t have any of my character on it”.  The sax intro was a major sticking point – Michael knew exactly what he wanted, and the top session player Wexler hired for the job couldn’t quite get it right.

The Wexler version, which you can listen to above, is starkly different from Michael’s self-produced track. The ultra-smooth former could be supper-club background music; the latter is deeper and more soulful. And Michael was right about the Muscle Shoals saxophonist missing the mark; that player’s effort couldn’t compare to the richness of the sound achieved by English jazzer Steve Gregory.  When Michael re-made the song at Sarm West in London, he tried out eight saxophonists before hitting on the right one in Gregory. An exacting taskmaster, Michael told each one, “It has to twitch upwards a little, just there. See? And not too much”. Gregory was the one who nailed it.   

‘Careless Whisper’ was almost released a year early, in 1983, by Innervision, with whom Wham! were by then in dispute. Michael knew it was too soon for a solo single, and Wham! publisher Dick Leahy refused Innervision permission. Leahy was able to halt it because it had never been released; therefore, he owned the license, without which Innervision couldn’t use the track.

When it finally appeared the following July, accompanied by a video shot in Miami – parts had to be refilmed because the Florida humidity played havoc with his hair – the reaction was all he could have hoped for. It spent three weeks at No 1 in both the UK and the US, and was praised not just for its swoony ambiance but also for top-notch artistry: it features, as Cashbox put it, “a highly romantic instrumental arrangement as well as an extremely well-written melody and lyric”.

“‘Careless Whisper’ is more resonant than my name”, Michael said in Bare, half-irritated, half-amazed at his teenage creation’s staying power.  He has only his own resounding talent to blame.

By Caroline Sullivan

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PHYSICAL REISSUE: ‘Careless Whisper’ is being reissued for its 40th anniversary by Sony Music as a 4-track CD single and three different 12-inch vinyl pressings (black, ruby marble coloured vinyl and picture disc). All formats contain the single version, extended mix and instrumental mix, along with a previously unreleased live version from 2008. This will be the first time the instrumental has been issued on CD, outside the USA. The Wexler version is of course notable by its absence. Fans of ‘Careless Whisper’ can own both the single and extended version of the song mixed in immersive Dolby Atmos by purchasing the SDE-exclusive blu-ray audio of Make It Big.

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