9 June 1984
You may have aspirations to create timeless pop epics and personal artistic statements, but if the other fifty per cent of your group is Andrew Ridgeley, plus your group’s name includes an exclamation mark, then you need to cut your cloth to measure. Even to my small child brain at the time, ‘Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go’ felt a bit dumb and irritating; I remember the narrative emerging very quickly of George Michael actually being a serious artist and already out-growing Wham! – releasing a solo single soon after was a fairly pointed statement to that.
Listening to it now, I find my childhood impressions were essentially sound. ‘Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go’ notionally harks back to ’50s and ’60s bubblegum pop but feels like pure ’80s day-glo plastic. Even on its own terms it messes up; the Doris Day reference is an absolute clunker. Way to get down with us kids, George!
I can afford to be hard on ‘WMUBYGG’, knowing that George Michael will go on to make plenty more duds but also a few genuinely good records. Among the latter will be another Wham! single from 1984 which has now become a much-loved classic. In that light, we can let this one go-go to the realm of mere ’80s nostalgia.
