Review: How Could We Not Be in Love with these ‘Two Idiots’?
Netflix’s new documentary celebrates the joie de vivre of Wham!
The Yearning Rating: ✰✰✰✰½
Romance: ✰
Sex (Appeal): ✰✰✰✰
Storytelling: ✰✰✰✰½
Performance: ✰✰✰✰✰
Yearning: ✰✰✰✰✰
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Light spoilers for Netflix’s WHAM! ahead.
Written by Meg Heim
Gab took me on a date last Friday night to the Paris Theater to see Netflix’s new documentary, WHAM! As I sat on a bench behind the Nathan’s Famous Hot-Dog stand on 58th and 5th, enjoying a Famous Hot Dog before the movie, I couldn’t help but wonder: what more was there to Wham! than staples like “Last Christmas” and “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go”? The dynamic musical duo has always fallen into that bucket of 80s music that I feel deeply connected to despite having been born in 1994 and not really knowing much of its origins whatsoever. But after seeing this documentary, I am truly taken with a story about two best friends who were destined for an inspired, groundbreaking creative partnership.
Wham! has its roots in boyhood. Members Andrew Ridgeley and Georgios Panayiotou met when they were just twelve years old, and Georgios (referred to lovingly by Andrew throughout the film by his nickname, “Yog” and eventually his stage name, George Michael) was new to their school. Their teacher asked the class, “Who is going to look after the new student?” and Andrew threw up his hand.
“I genuinely believe there was something predestined about it,” says George Michael in an audio clip that plays over footage and photos of the two as kids and teenagers. The documentary chooses to exclusively use interview audio from Andrew and George, and during the Q&A I attended after the premiere screening, Director Chris Smith shared that this was in part to honor the core essence of Wham!: youthful exuberance must always be kept at the heart center when telling this story. Hearing only Ridgeley and Michael discuss and celebrate their work through interview clips, home videos, and news and TV coverage was totally unique; it really serves to keep you present while watching the fast-paced, stylish doc. The two men carry this incredible, passionate energy—and the doc’s audio, coming only from rare, candid, and largely unheard interviews, positively drenches you in it.
After a brief foray into ska music, the two sixteen year olds carried on writing songs together and partying in London’s West End. From the very start, they were always creatively compatible—one would come up with a chord progression he loved, and the melody that the other had been working on independently would somehow fit it perfectly. It was a match made in ‘80s funk heaven.
Their intuitive sense of what worked was always there—the very first demo that Wham! produced featured 3 songs that all went on to become No. 1s on the chart: “Wham Rap! (Enjoy What You Do)”, “Club Tropicana”, and “Careless Whisper”. Audio from their first demo plays during the documentary and it's remarkable how much of their polished pop style is already established in their earliest recordings. Their ethos, born out of such fun, youthful antics, was tangible from the jump.
The structure of this movie takes care to illustrate how Andrew and George’s very different personalities impacted the way they handled setbacks and challenges on Wham!’s path to stardom. While all of their songwriting was initially collaborative, George fiercely attached himself and his sense of self-worth to how popular the music was with their public. Andrew, ever buoyant, always had a playful, happy-go-lucky attitude. He was unfailingly positive, about Wham! and most other things: “There was only ever one thing I wanted to do, and that was to be in a band with George Michael”. Andrew recalls being overly confident, going door-to-door at record label companies with a 4-minute demo track in hand and absolutely insisting that they did have an appointment.
Andrew’s mother ended up being a foundational source for this documentary. Since the two teenagers signed Wham!’s very first record deal at a greasy spoon cafe, she meticulously kept nearly 50 scrapbooks detailing the meteoric rise of the duo with photos, reviews, news clippings and other ephemera. The doc is punctuated with her collages, starting with photos as early as the two twelve year olds getting to know each other and reaching all the way to No. 1 chart positions.
The two complemented each other. The doc is full of long musical interludes and clips from their unbelievable live performances; the spirit of Andrew and George Michael on stage is so warmhearted and full of life that I was smiling the entire time. Wham! signed their first record deal when both boys were 19, and the interviews that score the movie frequently include both George and Andrew looking back on their youthful, shameless self-promotion with a little pride and a very good sense of humor. After a lucky, last minute invite to the prime time music chart show “Top of the Pops”1, Wham! finally got their moment. Their single flew up the charts and that was when things started to shift for the scrappy, teenaged duo. As footage of them jumping up and down on stage in matching red and white outfits plays, George Michael’s voice asks, “Like, how could the country be in love with these two idiots?”
As a writer and a creative, I dread those moments when I feel like my inspiration runs out and l lose sight of my artistic vision. There’s always that lurking fear under the surface: if you started to take off, could you maintain it? But when Wham!’s singles began to chart, the duo basked in the spotlight. Ridgeley and Michael chose to lean into the effervescent, uninhibited personas they were cultivating. “We actually had a very strong sense of doing something different. A vision of this kind of bright, new pop thing…Three or four years ago, with the punk thing, people were shouting in the streets. Now they’re not ashamed of being young and unemployed. They’d rather just go to a disco or a club and forget about it.” (Same.) They set out to make a new kind of pop music—and born of this was the fantasy that is “Club Tropicana”.
The “Club Tropicana” music video was shot on location in Ibiza and it is pure, aesthetic perfection. Andrew and George are gorgeously tan, with their hair slicked back to hell. They’re playing trumpets with pool water in them. George dumps a cocktail in the pool while Andrew glides into frame upside down on a floatie. Their back-up vocalists, Sheri Holliman and Dee C. Lee, walk down the beach in incredible high cut bikinis. If I could plan my next vacation anywhere, it would be to Club Tropicana. There is sunshine in the DNA of this song. My fave excerpt from the lyrics:
Castaways and lovers meet
Then kiss in Tropicana's heat
Watch the waves break on the bay
Oh soft white sands, a blue lagoon
Cocktail time, a summer's tune
A whole night's holiday
Club Tropicana, drinks are free
Fun and sunshine, there's enough for everyone
All that's missing is the sea
But don't worry, you can suntan!
During this music video shoot, George Michael came out to Andrew as queer. Andrew was immediately supportive and didn’t see George any differently. George and Andrew were 19 at the time, and initially, George really wanted to come out publicly. But it was hard to have perspective—they were teenagers, George’s family was conservative, and they were burgeoning pop stars. “That is a pivotal moment. At that point in time, I really did want to come out. And then I lost my nerve completely.” As Wham! was continuing to grow in popularity, George Michael questioned whether or not the pop star personas that they were cultivating aligned with being out publicly as a queer man. Michael cared deeply about the creative team that was him and Andrew, as well as the success of his songwriting and Wham!’s pursuit of chart topping hits.
As Wham! cemented itself as a fixture of the 80's pop scene, Andrew and George became sex symbols (particularly of the screaming-teenage-girl variety). Around this time, George Michael began a long, unrelenting battle with depression. He felt stuck: if he was true to himself and came out, he’d have to give up Wham!. Giving up Wham! would mean giving up the creative partnership that had made all his (and Andrew’s) dreams come true. At the same time, Michael began to feel increasingly burdened by the character he was portraying onstage. While he loved performing his songs for massive, adoring crowds2, the weight of not being able to express his authentic self was crushing. Obviously, for a modern, gay-as-hell audience like ourselves, this is hard to hear. We know that today, there would be large contingent of pop-obsessed gays ready to celebrate George Michael’s queerness. But I can’t imagine the immense amount of internal conflict this would’ve caused for someone whose star was rising so fast in the early 80s.
It’s sad to take a step back from this documentary and remember that George Michael is no longer with us. And Wham! is an amazing watch because you feel Michael’s presence so profoundly throughout it; it’s almost like he is still alive. I feel like so much of the conversation around George Michael focuses on not just his creative genius, but also how tragic his later life was. Wham! the documentary doesn’t lean into this, but also doesn't disregard it; instead it does an excellent job of honoring the reality of his life, while still focusing on how the spirit of Wham! cultivated such a foundational piece of the music world. It beautifully celebrates Andrew and George’s innate talent!
One thing that stood out to me throughout this documentary is how eloquently Andrew and George Michael are able to speak on the intention and design of Wham! As friends and creative partners, they were both incredibly thoughtful and deliberate. They collaborated and consulted each other and maintained a crystal clear vision for what they wanted Wham! to be. And they were both so joyful—despite battles with mental health, their friendship and shared artistry remained a North Star to them both. As George Michael’s solo career took off with the release of “Careless Whisper”, it became evident that it was time for him to focus on his work as an independent artist. There is a seemingly endless montage towards the end of the film where countless interviewers ask Andrew how it feels to essentially be left in the dust by George Michael. And to his credit, Andrew is absolutely gracious—a cornerstone of their relationship was their unfailing support for each other. Andrew only ever wanted George to have the brilliant career he knew he was destined to have. He was never jealous or resentful and to the very end of Wham!, continued to creatively support the duo in the ways he always had (aesthetics, styling, guitar parts, and more).
Wham! came and went in just four short years. An interview with Andrew from the end of the film summarizes it beautifully: “Wham! was never gonna be middle-aged or be anything other than that essential and pure representation of us as youths.” (They were 23, lol). It was only ever meant to be young and exuberant and this expression of total joy. What a gorgeous love letter to the genre that loved them back. To me, that’s the essence of pop music.
You can watch WHAM! now on Netflix. And I really recommend it :)
Next week on The Yearning, Ali drags the cast of RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars Season 8 with a finale recap.
Obsessed with this name
By this point George had taken over songwriting almost entirely for Wham!