George Michael: Beyond the Scandal, Beyond the Icon | From Big Lives

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0:37Copyright 2026. JPMorgan Chase and Company. 23-year-old Elizabeth Plunkett heads off for a night away with friends. It's the summer of 1976, the best summer we'd had for years. Just hours later, she is kidnapped by two men in British Bay. These are two career criminals wanted for rape in Britain. They are Ireland's first serial killers. While both men confessed to Elizabeth's murder, no one is ever convicted. How could this happen? We're being denied any sort of justice. Listen to Bad Women Presents Stolen Sister, wherever you get your podcasts.

1:18Pushkin. There's a handful of artists I really wish could have come on Broken Record. Artists who I think were sometimes misunderstood or at least hassled by the press and would have loved the opportunity to really be heard. Artists like Prince, Aretha, Tom Petty, and someone who I've come to admire a lot in a decade or so since his passing, George Michael. But I guess since we can't have him on the show, the least I could do as a second best of sorts is to bring you an episode of the new podcast Big Lies from the BBC and Pushkin. Host Kai Wright and Emmanuel Jotzi dig into the decades-old BBC archives to find rare interviews and footage that could shed new light on powerful, important cultural figures like Richard Pryor, LL Cool J, Tina Turner.

1:59And in this episode, George Michael. If you like what you hear, find more episodes of Big Lives wherever you get podcasts. And stay tuned for more episodes where Kai and Emmanuel explore the lives of legends like David Bowie, Amy Winehouse, Sinead O 'Connor, and more. From BBC Studios and Pushkin Industries, this is Big Lives. I'm Emmanuel Jochi. I'm Kai Wright. We are both journalists and cultural obsessives, and we just love trying to understand the world through an individual person's life. And by individual person, we're talking about folks who are the architects of our culture, people who have a huge impact on the way we live now, but often you've been kind of flattened to this single image or to a single moment.

2:45We're diving into these complicated, big lives of these icons, And to do it, we are using the treasure trove of the BBC archive. Turns out the BBC has been interviewing and covering cultural figures for over 100 years. And they still have the tapes. What do you think is the stock caricature image of George Michael? I think most people the stock image is like weird washed up pop star. And if you ask most gay men, you would probably get like fabulous diva. Yeah, I think that's accurate. And honestly, I don't think the two are mutually exclusive. And just to say like, you know, George Michael is a massive pop star of the 80s and 90s.

3:39he started his career in this band called Wham which he'd started with his best friend and that band and that music was sort of known for this very positive sort of happy kind of part and then George Michael made a transition to being like this solo artist I feel like in the last couple decades of his life really when I was growing up he was this figure that was just kind of like I feel like the diva and ridiculousness parts of him are what we focused on um he was kind of a joke frankly it hurts to hear yeah yeah that's what y 'all thought of george i know and i i hate to say i think in some quarters not all but i think in some quarters he is still a little bit of a joke i want to talk about that disconnect between the person in the icon you know someone who was sort of like an icon in the gay community and the sort of joke who i grew up kind of knowing and hearing about after listening through like years worth of archival interviews that he's given i feel like the jokey version of him exists just because we actually as a society don't want to talk about some of the other things that were impacting his work like to see george michael clearly would be to acknowledge some things we actually don't really want to acknowledge about the time period in which he was really becoming a star.

5:03Oh, wow. All right. I'm ready to talk about this. All right. Well, let's do it. And we're just going to get into his backstory a little bit here. I have to say, looking through the archive, one of the things I enjoyed a lot about George Michael is that he was above all, like, just this massive showman in the way that he talks about himself. There's basic facts that, like, are incontrovertible, right? He was born to a Greek family in the 1960s in London. Giorgios Kriakos Panagiotou. I've totally messed up that name. You can see why they did the name change for the Star Wars. You can tell why he ended up becoming George Michael.

5:38But in just looking through the archive and sort of learning about his origins, there are like sort of these two different origin stories. The first one is that he always knew he had this love for music. I'm going to play you this first clip. It's him in 1986 talking about just kind of his desire to be famous? I had very, very strong ambitions from a very early age, but they were totally unfocused. Totally unfocused. I mean, as far as I was concerned, when I was seven years old, I was convinced that one day I was going to be a pop star. I have no idea what I thought I was going to do. Really? Yeah, because I didn't think I could sing and I didn't think I could write or anything, but I was just convinced somehow that I was going to be a pop star.

6:17I don't know how. This is my George Michael, okay, Daniel? Like a seven-year-old who's like, I don't know about talent or anything, but I'm going to be famous. Right. What you're seeing is the image of a little boy singing and dancing in front of his mirror. Like that's the deal. Hair flowing, you know, all of it. Hair brushing hands. Well, okay, so there's that one. And then there's this completely different origin story. He tells this a good 30 years after this first one on a British interview show that's really famous called Desert Island Discs. Something strange happened. The age of about eight, I had a hair injury.

6:52and I know it sounds bizarre and unlikely, but it was quite a bad bang. I had it stitched up and stuff. But all my interests changed. Everything changed in six months. I had been obsessed with insects and creepy crawlies. I used to get up at five o 'clock in the morning and go out into this field behind our garden and collect insects before everyone else got up. And suddenly all I wanted to know about was music. it just seemed a very very strange thing and i have a theory that maybe it was something to do with this accident because they are this whole left brain right brain thing nobody in my family seemed to notice but i became absolutely obsessed with music and and everything changed after that it's so ridiculous like a bang on the head is so absurd and what's funny about it to me is he's definitely thought about this myth he's creating the left brain right brain trying to scientifically justify.

7:48He's looked up stuff. I mean, listen, though, you know, rule number one for a diva, Emmanuel, I have to do not correct their origin stories. Do not, like, point out inconsistencies in their myth-making. It is your job to nod and smile and say, oh, yes, that's exactly right. That's how it went down. I know for sure you're totally right. Honestly, you are just revealing how few divas I have in my life, Kai. I need more. Anyways, back to George Michael. So right from the beginning or later, however you want to believe, he develops this love. At seven or eight. Exactly. He develops this love of music.

8:25And by the time he's a teenager, he starts a band with one of his best friends at school, this guy whose name is Andrew Ridgely. And it's just the two of them. They get their first major record deal, the two of them. And this band becomes known as Wham. Wham has an exclamation mark. Yes, that is very important. And the exclamation mark is there because, I don't know, that group was known for this very, very positive, quote-unquote, bubblegum pop. I think that is a fair description of it. You know, disposable. It's literally a piece of bubblegum. And it's, you know, the first album I remember seeing, it was pink with, you know, wham is in like bubble, actual bubble letters.

9:06Exactly. So, you know, you think of it as like you dance to it once and that's the end. I feel like the best way to describe is actually just look at one of their most famous songs, which is called Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go. And I'm just going to read the lyrics. Just straight up. I object to this already, but go ahead. Wake me up before you go-go. Don't leave me hanging on like a yo-yo. This is not fair. This is not fair. And I caveat all of that by saying, yes, it is just as ridiculous as it sounds. And yet that song is a certifiable bop. It's spectacular. You can play it today and there is passion in the voice.

9:49You want to wake up and go to the go-go with him. OK, well, these songs were a bop. They were also super successful. They were one of the biggest bands of their day. and I think even besides the music there's this other aspect of them but I feel like it's such a time capsule of that moment in pop music right like they are putting out this happy-go-lucky pop while also looking pretty effeminate you know what I mean yeah certainly him yes certainly George you know I mean blown out hair with blonde tips you know and they're all their photos are like airbrushed in that 80s style where they look like they you know they're twinks in today's language but they look like femme twinks totally totally and the way their images are displayed on their album covers and stuff like that it's like they're extras out of primetime soap dallas or days of our lives you know what i mean just so like the hair is big the earrings are definitely in it's like a lot of artists of that era frankly like you have people like prince david bowie just like these sort of effeminate people.

10:58But I have to say, I don't know that any of those guys wore short shorts the way that Andrew Ridgely and George Michael did in some of their music videos. Because they weren't as gay? Exactly. Like, unlike a lot of the people in the 80s who were just sort of being effeminate, George Michael was actually gay. But around this time, he was not fully out. Not at all. um most people listen to his music I have to say watching it now it was obvious that he was gay but at the time it was kind of like it's open question no I mean you would have never that just the the ability to deny what was inside in front of your face around sexuality at that stage I mean I was really young so but still in the culture I mean so I grew up I didn't know of and someone who said, I am gay, I'm a gay man, publicly or privately until I was a late teenager.

11:59I was like in college. You know? So it just wouldn't have occurred to you. It wouldn't have occurred to the average consumer that George Michael was a gay man. I don't know what adult gay men were thinking at the time. You know? But in the mainstream culture, no way they would have thought he was gay. Right. Right, right. And obviously, back then, it was not necessarily good for his life or his career to come out. I actually just want to play you this clip of him talking about that period and his identity. He did this interview much later in 2007. Yeah, when I was 19, I came out to various friends and one of my sisters, and I said I was going to talk to my mum and dad and was persuaded in no uncertain terms that it really wasn't the best idea.

12:43By who? by friends, but they weren't really, I don't think they were trying to protect my career or their careers. I think they were literally just thinking of my dad. Because, you know, when you're 19, that's as far as you look at your parents and say, oh, don't tell your dad. My God, your dad will hit the roof. And then very soon after that, everything changed. AIDS was just not something I was prepared to bring into my parents' life. I was too young and too immature to know that I was sacrificing as much as I was. That's hard to listen to, honestly. I well one I hadn't realized how intentionally closeted he was and the wham era you know um for so many people certainly me you know it's a process of coming out to yourself uh that is hard but to have been intentionally with the collaboration of his friends choosing to be closeted while being a pop star who was considered sexy, right?

13:42Like young women were supposed to be into him. I can't imagine the weight of carrying that. It's super exhausting. But then, yeah, when you lay the AIDS stuff over top of it at the time, just the terror of that virus. A hundred percent. And if he's talking about the early 80s, it's also a time, remember, we didn't even know. there was so much yeah we didn't know i mean literally in a lot of quarters people did not call it aids like we didn't even have a name for it and yeah like in the early 80s aids is this thing right that's just like coming on the scene it's exploding and activists in the u.s gay activists are desperately trying to just like wake up the public to what's happening um like just just when i was looking through the thing i was struck by was like take a song like wake me up Before You Go Go that I just made fun of, right?

14:34This happy-go-lucky song. The year Wake Me Up Before You Go comes up. It is activist Bobby Campbell, who was a nurse who came forward with this illness that he had. He had complications from AIDS. And that was sort of like this psychic moment in the public consciousness about, oh, there's this disease and gay men are dying from it. Wow. First off, I'm just connecting the dots like between the beginning of AIDS activism and wham. And even in my own life, just thinking about like looking at that album cover and looking at that bubblegum pop, you know, alongside this epidemic. And it was a time in, certainly at least in the United States, where there was so much desire for optimism.

15:23Like that's what made AIDS so hard. One of the things that made it so hard to respond to is everybody, including gay men, were at a moment politically and culturally where it was like, morning in America, let's have fun, you know, and along comes this epidemic. And to think about him as a 19-year-old boy, that sucks. It sucks. Just the weight of that on someone. You can hear it, like, between the lines of what he's saying. I just want to play you just another clip from that same interview. So I'll try to understand, firstly, how much I love my family and that AIDS was the predominant feature of being gay in the 80s and early 90s, as far as any parent was concerned.

16:04And my mother was still alive and every single day would have been a nightmare for her thinking about what I might be subjected to. And that's legit. You know, and it's interesting when he's saying this stuff to the modern ear, it might sound cowardly too, right? Because we went through this whole period, you know, in the 80s and 90s around coming out, not just as gay men and not as just as queer people, but also around HIV and naming your status and fighting the shame that was part of what was killing us. I mean, ACT UP's slogan was silence equals death. And at the same time, he's a 19-year-old boy, you know, and being gay and this deadly disease is synonymous.

16:50and I just, I have so much empathy for him carrying that. And so much, honestly, about his experience in Wham! and what comes next is his transition from this scared boy at 19 to the man that he's going to become and the man that he wants to be given everything that's happening. And that's what we're going to talk about after the break.

17:16Being a small business owner isn't just a career, it's a calling. Chase for Business knows how much heart and effort go into building something of your own. That's why they make your business growth their priority. The team at Chase takes the time to understand your mission, where you are now and where you want to go. Their broad range of solutions is designed with you in mind so you can bring your ideas to life. From banking to payment acceptance to credit cards, you can conveniently manage all your business finances all in one place with their digital tools. Looking for tips and advice? Their online resources are always available to give you the solutions you need to help your business thrive.

17:52See how your business can get stronger and go farther with Chase for Business. Learn more at chase.com slash business. Chase for Business. Make more of what's yours. The Chase Mobile app is available for select mobile devices. Message and data rates may apply. JPMorgan Chase Bank, NA. Member FDIC. Copyright 2026, JPMorgan Chase & Company. 23-year-old Elizabeth Plunkett heads off for a night away with friends. It's the summer of 1976, the best summer we'd had for years. Just hours later, she is kidnapped by two men in British Bay. These are two career criminals wanted for rape in Britain. They are Ireland's first serial killers.

18:29While both men confess to Elizabeth's murder, no one is ever convicted. How could this happen? We're being denied any summer to justice. Listen to Bad Women Presents Stolen Sister, wherever you get your podcasts.

18:46welcome back to big lives today we're talking about the one and only george michael by the late 1980s george michael is kind of done with the bubblegum poppiness of wham yeah right he releases sort of almost like a tester single just to test the waters of solo stardom that Andrew Ridgely helps co-write, but he's not in, called Careless Whisper. A bonafide classic. Yes. Which I have to say, as someone who grew up playing the saxophone, someone has asked me to play that song almost every time I've ever played in public. Like almost every single time. The whole thing is supposed to be much more romantic.

19:30And it's just like this sort of indication of where he's going as an artist, right? he's trying to be a little bit more openly thoughtful in terms of sultry and soulful and a little darker you know totally there's a line in there about how his guilty feet ain't got no rhythm yeah i'm never gonna dance again not the way i danced with you like it's it's definitely supposed to be the sort of song that someone could picture themselves in you know what i mean And like where there's loss and hurt. It's not a party. It's a reflection. A hundred percent. And he keeps that moving. Right. And all of it builds to this tentpole of an album, like a first major solo album called Faith.

20:17Absolutely one of the best albums ever. Wow. Best albums ever. Correct. Okay. Okay. That is what I will stand on. Wow. It's brilliant. It's brilliant work. It's certainly, you know, in my life, it is one of my favorite albums. Can I make a guess as to why that is? kai okay yeah one the music is fantastic it is such a more mature version of him and also it is a version of him just in terms of the aesthetic like his appearance if he's been on this journey from boy to mad he is a man when faith comes out he's a man i'm talking he goes from sort of as you said this kind of twink in the 80s to a muscled man he goes from being clean shaven to having just right amount of stubble the stubble to this day the george michael stubble like there are all of y 'all are out here trying to do the george michael stubble and the the dangling cross earring became like the thing for many generations later young gay men of like can i have the stubble and the little cross earring it's it's definitive style and a lot of the visuals for this album, he's left the Days of Our Lives soap star look behind.

21:30And he looks kind of just like a biker dude in leather that is just a little too tight. Just enough. Biker dude is a very polite way to put it. This is leather kink. This is a genuine leather daddy. Yes. The other thing is, I will say, I hadn't thought about this. But having listened to you, like thinking through him, it also part of what makes it such a great album for me is it feels so much more honest. And I hadn't I never really thought about that. Like that's part of what's so cool about the look and the music and everything is it is a more honest person and a more honest take. Like insofar as what you're seeing is a man who is really embracing not only like in a way his own gayness, which he's still not out at this point.

22:22But, you know, there are songs in this album that when you listen to them, that is the conclusion you come to. Certainly. Like there was a song called Father Figure, which is a complicated song. It's a creepy song. I love it. You know, some of the lyrics is to do the reading again. You know, let me be your father figure. Put your tiny hand in mine.

22:52I will be your creature teacher. Anything you have in mind. Ciao. George. And it works. Like, it is the biggest selling album in America in 1988. and Fave actually becomes the first album by a white solo artist to hit number one on the Billboard Top Black Albums chart. This I did not know. So he's, I mean, this is, and remember, this is Michael Jackson. Prince is still around. Prince is still around. Like, Keith Sweat, you know. Like this man is beating Keep Sweat on a man who once had a radio show called The Sweat Hotel. He's beating Keep Sweat for sexiness among black people. Way back up. I don't know about the Keep Sweat Sweat Hotel.

23:44Keep Sweat Sweat Hotel. That's a discussion for another time. But all you need to know is it is a call in radio show. Shut up. It is a call in radio show all about sex and people calling in to Keep Sweat about their problems. How is this the first time I've heard of this? I don't know. But all you need to know for now is that George Michael beat that guy. Right, right. Beat that. And yeah, totally. He's in this period where he is totally flying high. And then this other thing happens, which is that he meets someone. And I'm going to play just this clip about it again from the interview show Desert Island Discs.

24:23He gave this interview in 2007. How did you meet your first love? Well, what happened was actually, it was a strange, strange thing. I don't know if people will relate to this, but there have only been three times in my life that I've really fallen for anyone. And each time, on first sight, I had something as clicked in my head that told me I was going to know that person.

24:48And it happened with Anselmo across a lobby. So I met him in that lobby, and I didn't understand why the click happened. This is a man in a Brazilian hotel. I'm never going to see him again. Why did that happen? I didn't understand what was going on. This was the first love of my entire life. This was the first person I ever shared my life with. How beautiful. He's such a beautiful storyteller. He is. He is, right? He just saw a man across the hotel lobby, and like the world stopped. But I mean, listen, have you never experienced such a thing? I have experienced such a thing. I have experienced such a thing.

25:29For sure, for sure. Where you're just like, I don't know how you're going to matter to me, but you are going to matter. But you're all I can focus on in the world right now. A hundred percent. In true George Michael fashion, there is another variation of this story. Oh, George. Which is that he meets, and just to say the man he meets, his name is Anselmo Fulepa. He is Brazilian. There's a version of this story where George Michael's performing a concert in Rio to like thousands of people and in the crowd, a lone face. They're not even similar. Not even. I thought for sure it would still be like in a hotel lobby.

26:06I mean, to be fair to him, to be fair to him, I do think in that version of the story, he later sees him again in a hotel lobby. But the way he tells it is in that similar kind of way where it's like, I saw this man in the crowd. Everyone else is jiving to my music, but this man is serious wow george yes yes again i don't know this is all inappropriate you do not correct a diva's origin story i just like both stories okay i just love both stories and i the main thing you need to take away from this law is that this was george's first real adult relationship like he was in love in love yeah and this relationship would totally change the trajectory of his life because within six months of that fateful meeting of them starting to date anselmo will be diagnosed with aids yeah and so this fear right that george michael and so many other men like it's come home yeah and maybe it had come home in other ways before that but in this specific way was something that totally rocked his world and the thing about that is anselmo he gets sick pretty quickly um and you know at this point we're now firmly in the 1990s right um but early early 90s still so like 91 99 like in around 90s in around that there's still no treatment aids is just finally starting to be a thing that the government is taking seriously not just as it applies to gay people partly because there are two seismic events in pop culture.

27:47Basketball star Magic Johnson revealed he'd been infected with HIV during heterosexual sex. The HIV virus that I have attained, I will have to retire from the Lakers. AIDS clinics were inundated with calls for days afterwards. Which opens up a whole world for a lot of people. Massive world-changing. Up until then, HIV is known as the gay man's disease. And the white gay man's disease. A hundred percent. And a lot of people, I don't want to say okay with it, but they're... I'll say it. Okay, yeah, okay with that. Absolutely. And also, Magic Johnson is probably one of the most famous people on the planet.

28:31Right. In 1991. Right. Like, maybe the most famous sports person other than Michael Jordan. And literally that same month, that same November, Freddie Mercury dies from pneumonia after having battle AIDS. The pop star Freddie Mercury died last night in London. The lead singer with Queen, aged 45, had announced on Saturday he was suffering from AIDS. Yeah. Another massive celebrity. I mean, one of the most famous, arguably the most famous rock star on the planet right then. And as an aside, now that I think about it, a bit of a counterpoint to George Michael. I mean, Freddie Mercury was so clearly gay.

29:11Hmm. You know, what George Michael became when Faith came out was kind of a version of what Freddie Mercury had been since the seven. Oh, so sort of just like sexual, a little teasing, very much himself without actually saying anything. Yeah. And that thin, masculine, like tight clothes and like really associated with being a gay man of like that era's gay culture. And, you know, it's interesting that you point out that sort of difference in a relationship between the two. Because you know how we were talking earlier about that origin story of George Michael where he sort of, you know, knows he wants to be a star from the beginning.

29:48And he's singing in front of his bathroom mirror, possibly at seven. Like, the person he's imitating when he does that is Freddie Mercury. Wow. Freddie Mercury is George Michael's hero. That makes total sense. A massive hero of his. That makes total sense. And within a year of Freddie Mercury dying, Queen hits up George Michael, like their band members hit up George Michael. And they're like, hey, we are going to put on a massive tribute concert for Freddie Mercury. This thing is going to be billed basically as up until that point, one of the largest, if not the largest, AIDS-specific benefit concert and awareness concert in UK history.