BACK in 1990 when he released Listen Without Prejudice Volume One George Michael was in retreat from stardom. The thing he’d most wanted turned out not to be as much fun as he expected. His second solo album was an attempt to reframe him as a songwriter rather than a pin-up (hence the title’s air of special pleading).
Nearly 30 years on, freshened up and divorced from its original context, it can be seen for the joy of a thing it mostly is. An exemplar of the two poles of Michael’s post-Wham songcraft: sombre balladry and funky pop plasticity.
That dichotomy is apparent right from the start. It kicks off with Praying for Time, Michael’s socially conscious state-of-the-nation address which feels if anything even more appropriate now than when it was written (there’s an even better live version on the MTV Unplugged bonus disc), before giving way to the Funky Drummer-sampling hit Freedom 90.
What follows bounces, at times bumpily, between the stately and the sensuous. But at its best it’s a record of a songwriter setting the tone for everything he would do subsequently. It reaches a peak in the middle with the blue-lit bruise of Cowboys and Angels and the slink and roll of Waiting for the Day; two love songs that find George Michael the romantic in full flow, all wrapped up within the effortless ease and enfolding embrace of that gorgeous voice.
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