20 June 1987
Here it is: after all those years of Wham! service and a hit single on the side, George Michael finally starts his “serious artist” solo career. And what’s the first thing he releases? Well, remember in the video for ‘I’m Your Man’ where there’s a film countdown reel that slips in the word ‘SEX’ for ‘SIX’? It’s that in song.
It would be bad enough if ‘I Want Your Sex’ was merely a puerile, ridiculous track whose only idea is to try and shock us by saying the word ‘sex’. (On which point, who has ever said “I want your sex” in real life?) But more unforgivably, it’s a misogynistic record that glorifies male sexual pushiness and pressure towards women. The sexism starts early: “There’s boys you can trust / and girls that you don’t”. Then there’s not taking ‘no’ for an answer: “I tell you that I love you but you still say no”. By the end it’s just plain nagging and pushing: “Don’t you think it’s time you had sex with me?” On top of that, the video features plenty of leery ogling of the lingeried lower half of a young woman. Musically, somebody presses one keyboard button for a rhythm track and another for a few squelchy synth effects.
Controversy and titillation are the only reasons ‘I Want Your Sex’ was a hit, as it has no attractive or redeeming features whatsoever. Far from being an artistic statement or grown-up treatment of a taboo topic, this is just a late-night shock-jock version of those randy later Wham! singles like ‘I’m Your Man’ and ‘The Edge Of Heaven’. Were it not for George already having made fine singles like ‘Last Christmas’ and ‘A Different Corner’ before this, you would have wondered if the talented one in Wham! had actually been Andrew Ridgeley.
