Careless Whisper Is My Roman Empire

A couple weeks back I joked on my Instagram stories that I think about George Michael’s Careless Whisper (released 1984) multiple times per week - and that story ended up being my most viewed story to date. Clearly I hit a nerve!

For those not understanding the Roman Empire reference - there has been a popular TikTok trend going around where partners ask their husbands/boyfriends how often they think about the Roman Empire - and to their surprise, their spouses confess that they think about the empire…quite a lot. Men and their imaginations!

To disappoint you, I can’t say I experience this exact brain exercise - civilisation, war and battle tactics aren’t exactly my love language. Music on the other hand…

So whilst I joked about Careless Whisper - it’s also kind of…true?

In this month’s newsletter, I will illustrate how mad I am, by breaking down exactly what I think about when I think about Careless Whisper. I apologise in advance.

Firstly, please familiarise yourself with the source text:

It’s THE song heard in every neighbourhood shopping centre at 2:50pm. It’s THE song that elucidates a feeling of over-the-top sexiness. It’s corn, it’s cheese, it’s all the yellow foods that aren’t quite meals, but not quite snacks.

But what lies beneath the surface of this quintessential pop song is the pursuit for perfection, and the essence of youthful naivete. It represents so much of the brilliance and chaos that is music and the music industry. Being someone that thinks about the industry often, my mind seems to wonder back to this song fairly often, and the endless stories behind it and within it, and how it is both sonically and historically rich. Let’s dig in.

1. Let’s start here: George wrote Careless Whisper when he was 17 (“Guilty feet have got no rhythm” - written at 17!). This is impactful to me as I often think and talk about whether it’s necessary to be quite young in order to be the most vulnerable and almost trite in your music expression - where the distance between thought and thinking is wide, where under-thinking wins and overthinking is yet to appear in an immature mind. Bandsplain’s Yasi Salek discussed this on one of my latest podcasts, much to the chagrin of my older audience. The concept she argued is that there’s a reason why, time and time again, you hear stories of transcendent artists being young, say 16-21 years of age. I don’t think you need to be young, but I do think youthfulness can extract a truth that no grown adult would have the bravery to say out loud

2. Wham! was signed off the back of the Careless Whisper demo and a couple other songs. Imagine being the A&R who heard it and called their boss to say - “ok so…we have one of the greatest songs ever written on our hands, and the group is unsigned…from Watford”. They probably played it off and said “yeah it’s ok…” to give themselves leverage when negotiating deal points

3. The initial demo is kind of lo-fi groovy? And a bit out of tune. Recorded with a drum machine, last minute and in one take, I love hearing early works in comparison to the final output - and how the essence was extracted, expanded and protected

4. The team was so assured of Careless Whisper’s hit potential that they:

   1. Sat on it for three years. They didn’t rush the release but instead were patient enough to release it when it sounded just right. The reason I think about this is that sometimes I ponder about whether a song is a true reflection of our time. Songs that “define” a year are often written many years prior. Of course, I understand a song can defines a collective experience once it hits the ears of the public, but I do think about music that “reflects the time we live in” and the fact that, well, Careless Whisper was a reflection of George Michael’s 1981, much less 1984

   2. Recorded and produced it twice:

      1. Originally Careless Whisper was produced by Jerry Wexler, who famously signed Led Zeppelin and recorded Aretha Franklin. Michael wasn’t satisfied with his production, so he canned it and re-recorded/produced it himself. Incredible conviction and confidence by a then twenty year old. Go listen to Wexler’s version here. It’s clear what’s missing: SOUL! It’s for all intents and purposes the same song, but allow me to give you more adjectives: THIN. FLAT. EMPTY. LIFELESS. Wexler you’re fired!

      2. The second (and final version) was recorded just weeks before it was set to be released. “Sod this. I'm going to go in and do it as if it had never been done before and see what happens“ recounted Michael. It takes a particular level of decisiveness to scrap everything and start again - in George we trust

      3. The bassline on the final recording was played by Deon Estus, Marvin Gaye’s live bass player. Of course it was!!!

      4. The final track’s live instrumentation was largely recorded in one take, almost like one big jam. You can clearly hear that they were all vibing off each other, which makes sense considering they all had played together as a live band prior to this recording

      5. The famous saxophone riff was an elusive unicorn - George cycled through the best of the best, firing each one until he landed on Steve Gregory - the NINTH player to attempt it. Sometimes I think about this story, and the pursuit of perfection. It’s not the melody that maketh the song, but the breath behind it

5. It’s credited as Wham! featuring George Michael in some territories and George Michael in others. There was concern about whether Careless Whisper would play well as a George Michael solo considering Wham! was the more known entity at the time. A small decision that left a tiny trail of confusion among fans

   

   

6. The fact that the song is five minutes is preposterous for a pop song. There’s also a 6:32 album version - just to be extra decadent. Imagine a five minute number one single now. Idle hands could never sit through the indulgent outro…

7. As such was the perfectionism, the music video was reshot across multiple countries. His sister was flown in from England to Miami to cut and style George’s hair for certain scenes, while other parts were shot and added later in London. I can’t say I think about the music video all that much - it’s lite-porno and surprisingly slapdash when you consider the lengths they took to perfect the song

   

   

8. George ended up hating the song, almost surprised at how people could like it:
   
   “…was not an integral part of my emotional development — it disappoints me that you can write a lyric very flippantly—and not a particularly good lyric—and it can mean so much to so many people. That's disillusioning for a writer” — George Michael, 1991
   
   I think what’s particularly interesting about this quote is that there are two George’s in this equation - the heart-on-sleeve seventeen year old imagining a love affair, and the older man, speaking about the track seven years later, wanting to curl up into a ball of cringe.
   
   I think it’s impossible for an artist to seperate themselves from the art, being the author of the work. I often think about how an artist can only really know their music when they make it, and after that, it’s no longer theirs, but ours, forever

9. So much was it no longer George’s upon release, hilariously Brooke Shields thought the song was written about her

10. It has one billion plays on YouTube, making it one of the most viewed music videos of all time (well…one of 400-odd but still). Much of this is due to the ubiquity of the song through time, but also its uncanny ability to be rediscovered via memes

    1. SexySaxMan’s calling card is Careless Whisper - a viral YouTube sensation who blared the song’s sax solo in as many public places as possible

    2. Careless Whisper is the soundtrack to sexy parody advertisements. Much like the Girl From Ipanema is to go-to elevator music soundtrack. I sometimes think about whether the song’s publishers over-sold the rights to the song and recontextualised it to its detriment - making it the anthem to epitomise 80’s sleaze. Although, to be fair, it surely helped it in its forty years of relevance

    3. The bridge is now very famously TikTokified by a bunch of viral videos - evoking everything from seduction to pain, regret, drama with a good slice of raclette-oozed cheese

11. And finally, indulge me as I pore over all of the song specifics that are like glinting jewels on a crown. While the above 1-10 points are mental reference points that I think about often, the one and true reason why this newsletter exists is the amount of satisfaction I get out of all the tiny elements in the song - I’m not ashamed to confess it

    1. The tambourine: I think about how the song would NOT be the same without the tambourine. It would severely lack sparkle and is one of those elements that does a lot with a little

    2. I think about the tom tom sound sometimes. It kinda goes “thooong”. Not “thong” but “th-ooong”. The first time you properly hear it is at 1:19. It decays and leaves you winded

    3. The introduction of the Spanish guitar at 1:20 gives it a Latin feel that keeps the ear interested, and to be honest is a nice introduction and a precursor to the Spanish-guitar takeover of 90’s RnB

    4. Keep an ear out for the bassline. It’s simple but does just enough to keep it interesting and not generic. It constantly goes on and off the beat. It adds flourishes and then extracts itself before you’ve noticed that it’s trying. He is Marvin’s live bass player after all. He is Deon Estus

    5. The middle eight (2:45) is one of the greatest middle eight’s ever written. It is introduced with a deliciously 80’s Phil Collins-esque drum fill, followed by a couple of bold synth hits. Normally, a synth out of nowhere would feel out of place, but they rolled out the layering of the song so well that it builds upon the foundation without over-egging it. Not to mention the “but now who’s gonna dance with me” falsetto to end the bridge - it’s all too painful

    6. The fill and drum two-shot that occurs from 4:12-4:15 is my favourite part of the song. It only happens once but adds a beautiful full stop on the song. It signifies the start of the breakdown and the end of George’s lament. You will always catch me air-drumming to this part

    7. Right near the end (4:40), a choir synth is introduced more prominently, oddly giving it this Pet Shop Boys sounding outro. I really feel like the production team were scared of losing a listener’s interest, so they just threw it in and ramped up the volume at the end. It doesn’t really make sense, but it makes perfect sense

    8. The snare/tom/kick fill at 4:12 gives it this very jam-band “live show” feel to it. As mentioned above, it was very much a “jam” in the studio, and melts our ears even more. In my mind’s eye, I imagine George slowly walking to the side of the stage, only lit from behind, as he slinks to the beat as he gives his band their moment to bask in the limelight

So there you go. You thought I was joking when I said it was my Roman Empire. If I was in a room playing this with you, I’d undoubtedly pause, rewind, replay parts…all for you to yell at me and say “CAN WE JUST HEAR THE SONG PLEASE?”

If you know me well enough, I often think about things on a micro and macro level - the nuances that make something truly special, and the macro decisions that goes into ensuring that a song of such brilliance was treated with the utmost care and patience. The song is cheesy, the song is soulful, the song is decadent, the song is timeless. I think the Romans would have liked it.