George Michael

Forthcoming, 2027

This book uses the concept of persona to deconstruct the career, identity, and cultural significance of the artist George Michael. Since his passing in 2016, there has been a greater understanding of how George Michael as an artist shaped our society through both his music and his life. He was a fun-loving pop superstar whose dream was to be famous, but he was also hiding a complex queer identity and turbulent personal life. It is in this tension between personal and public life where the personas of George Michael were created, and which this book explores.

George Michael transferred through 4 major personas throughout his career. He started as one half of the fun-loving boyband Wham! who were seen as a throw away pop hit machine, a mix of wholesome enjoyment and youthful exuberance. After their split, Michael consciously developed a more complex and older sexualised identity, showcasing that the ex-boyband member was now a man. This continued throughout the early and mid 1990s, as Michael’s music and identity was viewed as an expression of presumed straight sexual hedonism. This was shattered after his arrest in 1998 for lewd behaviour with a man in a Los Angeles toilet. His arrest would prove to be one of the pivotal moments of his career as his artistic persona and personal life would ultimately merge and inform his identity from here on. The final of these personas considered by this book is the one of the dead artist. The death of an artist both solidifies and also brings into question the persona of the artist. This manifested itself through social media representations of mourning by the fans, which this book will contextualise and analyse.

This book considers each of these distinct periods of Michael’s life and how they build upon one another. By using first hand analysis of press reports, primary research of social media sites, and the words and reflections of George Michael throughout his career, this book is unique in its framing of an artist through their career personas. The concept of persona offers a framework to consider how representations of Michael were constructed both around him and by him. This is tied into identity, with the press, the fans, and the artist using different personas to control how they want the world to perceive them. Finally, legacy brings these differing elements together by considering how the act of the death affects how we see artist’s personas and their posthumous identities.