"Freedom!'90"- George Michael
On Finding Self-Love
A coming out song that was more like a plea for acceptance.
For queer people, coming out of the closet is a process. There’s the questioning phase, exploratory phase, and for many, shame. If you get there, the final stage is acceptance. All of this can happen long before — or even long after — the words are said aloud. George Michael’s career is a metaphor for every stage of the coming-out process, and “Freedom! ‘90” represents the beginning.
It’s a coming out song before the actual act of saying it. Michael pleads in the lyrics, “I won’t let you down.” He’s begging us to have faith in him, even after he eventually stops pretending.
I won’t let you down.
So please don’t give me up.
Cuz I would really really love to stick around.
Michael made a lot of money with the boy band duo, Wham! as the sun-kissed object of teenage girl fantasies, then again when he went solo as the macho sex object in tight jeans and leather. With the album, Listen Without Prejudice Vol. 1, Michael was desperate for the music to come first. He was desperate to be seen as something different.
“Freedom! ‘90” was a rebellion from the grips of his record company and their perfectly-styled image of Michael as a straight sex symbol. And since Michael wouldn’t publicly come out until 1998, these lyrics might be considered the “exploratory” phase of the journey — a peek from behind the closet door.
In a 2004 interview with Attitude, Michael reflected on the significance of the symbolism in “Freedom! ‘90”: "By the end of the Faith tour I was so miserable because I absolutely knew that I was gay... I didn't suddenly want to come out. I wanted to do it with some kind of dignity. So I thought 'okay, you have to start deconstructing this whole image.”
All we have to do now
Is take these lies and
Make them true somehow
Michael continued to — quietly — deconstruct that image and — quietly — hint at his queerness for the next several years. Frustrations with his label Sony Records materialized in a 1992 legal battle over being released from his contract. His follow-up album, Listen Without Prejudice Vol. 2, was scrapped. Instead, he opted to donate three songs to a charity project that helped people with AIDS-related illness. Around this time, Michael had secretly begun a relationship with Anselmo Feleppa, a Brazilian designer whom he later described as his “savior” and who gave him the courage to accept his sexuality.
But only a few months into their relationship, Feleppa was diagnosed with AIDS. "I was absolutely devastated to find out he had a terminal illness... just devastated," Michael says in the documentary, “Freedom,” which he co-directed. That same year, Michael’s friend and musical hero, Freddie Mercury, died of AIDS-related complications. Michael immediately volunteered to perform at his tribute concert. "I went out there knowing I had to honor Freddie, and I had to pray for Anselmo," recalls Michael in the documentary. "I just wanted to die inside. I was so overwhelmed by singing the songs of this man I had worshiped as a child, who had passed away in the same manner my partner was going to experience.”
Anselmo Feleppa died in 1993. Grief stricken, it would take three years before Michael released another album. This time, he peered even further from the shadow of the closet door by dedicating the project, Older, to the partner he grieved. Though he wasn’t yet ready to say the words about his sexuality, the songs were more authentically describing his real life and not the image crafted on his behalf. The single, “Jesus to a Child,” a hauntingly beautiful ode to his lover, went straight to no. 1 on the UK Singles chart. The album was a commercial success. Authenticity wasn’t a career-ender.
“For anyone who had a clue about symbolism, I was coming out,” George later explained. “Fastlove’ makes me laugh because it’s all about cruising and covering my pain, blunting out that pain with fast love, simple as that. There’s not one track on the album that’s not about Anselmo or the risk of AIDS.”
After more unsuccessful attempts to break ties with Sony Records, tragedy would befall Michael again in 1997 with the death of his mother to cancer. Michael retreated back into depression. Substance abuse followed. In 1998, the closet door that Michael had peered behind for so many years was finally pried open when he was arrested for “lewd acts” with an undercover police officer in a public bathroom. He later told GQ magazine that the incident was "a desperate attempt to make the trauma in my life about me," so he could "control the outcome."
Michael was finally liberated from the costume that fame required. He talked about his sexuality openly now in interviews. He became a prominent voice for LGBTQ+ causes. He even poked fun at his arrest in the music video for his 1998 single “Outside,” which featured a men’s bathroom turned disco dance floor and policemen kissing.
Despite this newfound freedom and continued commercial success, Michael never fully recovered from the loss of those closest to him. He battled with substance abuse until his own death in 2016 at just 53-years-old. His death was officially ruled “heart failure,” but we might wonder if it was more akin to “heartbreak.” Michael died on Christmas, the same season when his partner Anselmo Feleppe, found out he had AIDS two decades earlier.
The coming-out process isn’t linear. It has fits and starts.
No matter your generation, coming out can be riddled by shame before a catharsis of acceptance. It’s unclear whether George Michael ever truly reached the “acceptance” stage of the process. But when he began to free himself of the shackles of heteronormativity in “Freedom! ‘90,” so many queer kids also looking for affirmation heard themselves in those lyrics. He was going to pave a way forward for us all and this was just the beginning. He didn’t let us down.
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It’s so easy when know the rules. It’s so easy, all you have to do is…
Name all five of the famous women supermodels in the “Freedom! ‘90” music video.
(Scroll to the bottom for the answer.)
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Quiz Answer: Linda Evangelista, Cindy Crawford, Naomi Campbell, Tatjana Patitz, and Christy Turlington were the most famous supermodels in 1990 and George Michael was inspired to ask them all to appear in his “Freedom! ‘90” music video after seeing them all on the cover of British Vogue magazine.
Did you catch last week’s issue?
No.7- "You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)" - Sylvester
At a time when other queer stars were still playing it straight, Sylvester dared to be an unapologetically out, genderfluid, Black pop star.
This is one of my all-time favorite songs. I love George Michael and love every single thing about this song and how it speaks to his experience over time. Also love the video. Reflecting on the video in 2015, [Cindy] Crawford stated that, at the time, they thought they were simply making "a really cool video," but that in retrospect, the video exhibits a dark humor: As MTV had altered the music industry so that physical beauty was now necessary to sell music, the video used five beautiful faces instead of the song's vocalist to mock this.
Another beautiful, enlightening piece. I would only add. That the MUSIC of "Freedom '90" is the GREATEST expression of George's joy, and yes, freedom. It is like Elton John, Earth, Wind and Fire and... George Michael in an explosive, soaring, inspiring celebration of all that music can be. I'm glad you chose it as your exemplar.