WHAM!

Grade: B+

I love hearing stories about how certain songs are written. Sometimes it’s the simplest occurrences that spark one. In WHAM!, George Michael shares the inspiration behind one of their biggest hits. His band mate, Andrew Ridgeley, was staying with George at the time, and began writing a note for him. He accidentally wrote the word “up” twice in the phrase “wake me up,” so he decided to repeat the word “go” at the end. This, of course, spawned the single “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go.”

WHAM! is a fascinating Netflix documentary with endless momentum. It coasts and coasts and coasts with no dip or lull. It has a hypnotic quality that plays like a symphony or extended montage. If anything, I wish it had incorporated more visuals of the interviewees who provided history. In the Beatles Anthology, it was fun to see present-day footage of the Threetles in various locations – with George in his massive back yard, and Paul at a campfire, and a boat for some reason. Here, we never SEE Michael or Ridgeley in post-1986 footage. We only hear them through voiceover. That is the movie’s biggest disappointment, but probably also works in its favor.

Through archival material which includes the usual music videos and live clips, we learn about the rise to success and the voluntary ending of the British pop duo WHAM!, which enjoyed an amazing run from 1982-86. George Michael and Andrew Ridgeley started off as childhood best friends. I had never heard of Ridgeley, who will forever be that other guy in WHAM! – a sub-Garfunkel, if you will. From all appearances, he was – and has always been – exceedingly gracious, proud of his friend, and just happy to be along for the ride. He is alive and well at age 60, and is quite comfortable from the yearly royalties alone. In 2020, “Last Christmas” finally reached #1 – one of George Michael’s wishes.

I’m not sure what instrument was Michael’s primary one for the writing process, but beneath the 80s over-production, I could always find a well-thought-out chord progression in everything I heard. “Freedom” is a great song, as is “Careless Whisper” and the aforementioned “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go.” And his sweet powerful tenor voice was always spot on, as we hear in Band Aid’s “Do They Know It’s Christmas” and his famous duet with Elton John on “Don’t Let the Sun Go Down On Me” at Live Aid. The film isn’t shy about touching on Michael’s personal struggles with his sexuality. He finally came out as gay in 1998, but was juggling hiding that while dealing with newfound fame.

The movie culminates with the group’s farewell concert at Wembley Stadium on June 28, 1986. If there were any hard feelings or bitterness, we don’t see it here. It all looks completely amicable. WHAM! is focused on WHAM!, and doesn’t explore Michael’s solo efforts – or Ridgeley’s, for that matter. You unfortunately won’t hear “Faith” here. In that sense, it feels like the ending is also a beginning, that we’re welcome to research further if we want – but otherwise, we aren’t spoon-fed anything extraneous. As Ridgeley says, we eventually wake up from the dream.

Grade: B+