Your Pop Surely Came From Po: The Touching Netflix Documentary “Wham!”

Simon Meier

This is the story of a wonderful friendship. The story of a young man who wanted to escape. And the story of his best friend who put everything on hold to make this liberation possible. A happy ending that brought tears to millions of fans.

It’s the story of Wham!, a band that stood for youth in the early 80s. To have to enjoy life, even if the external circumstances are bad. Dancing instead of depression. The club as therapy against unemployment. Let the old die. And all reinforced with an exclamation mark. “Wham! bam! I am a man!”, as George Michael and Andrew Ridgeley once sang.

When 11-year-old Georgios Kyriakos Panayiotou started a new school in North London in 1975, he was a shy, petite and – as he puts it – “little pig” wearing glasses. His father is a landlord from Cyprus, his grandfather was a shepherd in Greece. Georgios should one day make an academic career and ideally become a doctor. But Georgios is taken under the wing of a classmate named Andrew, and Andrew thinks learning is the last thing he can do.

The two are inseparable, at the age of 16 they found the ska band The Executive, an unprecedented failure, in 1981 on 18 Wham!. Their first demo tape features “Club Tropicana”, “Careless Whisper”, and “Wham Rap!”. The career start is a rum crab on the charts, once they reach number 42 they are considered “socially critical funk” and Georgios now calls himself George Michael, an incredibly smooth stage name, a bit like Michael Jackson. George knows where he wants to go: to the top.

In the documentary “Wham!” by Chris Smith (who is also the producer of “Tiger King”, among others), George and Andrew talk about their time together. So kill George and live Andrew. Enough audio documents of George Michael have survived to effortlessly edit them into a coherent story.

Many of the images have never been seen before, such as that from Wham!’s China tour: George and Andrew had the idea to be documented in China by Lindsay Anderson, who won the Palme d’Or at Cannes in 1969, but then they liked that their portrayal in the mirror of a high-culture director wasn’t so great that the shots never reached the audience. Now you can see some innocent fragments of it, but with no explanation of how they came about.

In the winter of 1982, the two reached number 3 in the charts, a performance on “Top of the Pops” saved them, they went to Ibiza for the next video shoot, and George spent his first night with a man. He hasn’t slept with him yet, but he enjoys the rest, he finally feels comfortable. He tells Andrew he is gay or “at least bisexual”. He later says, “I pretended to be bisexual.” Andrew sees no problem. At least not for friendship.

It is clear to both that, as a pop star, George cannot be gay. A pop star like him lives off the adoration of girls. In interviews, George Michael talks about the beauty of the underwear that flies at him on stage. It is clear to him that he should put all his desire for new self-realization into music, it is his outlet.

Andrew, for his part, knows that Michael is the better performer. The better singer, songwriter and producer. The one of them who will one day start a solo career. It is not a painless realization, but it is the right one. And George will say for the rest of his life that he owes everything to Andrew. The courage and the music. That Andrew has always been his mainstay and the only one who has carved his way in art and in life.

It’s the irony of ’80s fashion that Andrew is responsible for the happiest thing Wham! has to offer: the appearance. There aren’t any guys on stage in shorter hot pants and with more swinging hips than these two. Her doll is definitely from Po. No other male artist is more in love with his hair dryer than George Michael, he gives off gross Princess Diana vibes, he also seems to have copied the look from her.

Wow! is brightly colored eighties fun, on stage a cross between pop and aerobics, the innocent version of Queen. Only occasionally overlapping lines of song that linger in the memory like lead, Dadaist poetry, such as the battle cry ‘Death by marriage!’ (death by marriage) or «guilty feet have no rhythm».

What is most astonishing, and also most tragic, about Smith’s documentary is George Michael’s obsession with success. He finds all his confidence in the applause, if a single or an album does not reach number 1 in the charts, he is devastated. The super catastrophe for his ego happened before Christmas 1984: George Michael hit the charts in his own way! Bob Geldof’s Ethiopian aid project Band Aid, in which he also sings, stands out with “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” in 1st place. The sentimental avalanche «Last Christmas» only in 2nd place.

In 1985, Wham! as the first Western pop act by China, there is nothing offensive about it and their lyrics are no longer socially critical. Andrew sees no point in singing against a system of which he is now part of the establishment. You can wham! don’t really go into depth. But that could also be the fault of Smith’s film. From this cheerful kaleidoscope of fun and playful. You have to look and listen very carefully to guess the secret dark cells behind the facade.

George remains insatiable. He always wants more and more now means freedom: «I realized: Oh my God, I’m a big star! But what was depressing was the box I put myself in.” On June 28, 1986, the two gave their farewell concert at Wembley Stadium, it’s called “the final”, Andrew says he hopes to retire “with decency”.

what! stay forever young, the two are 23 when they say goodbye and have sold 35 million records. George Michael will sell another 120 million as a solo artist, he dares without Wham! more, grows up, more provocative, scandalous – and finally comes true. Andrew tries his hand at being a race car driver, actor and solo artist and bar owner. His greatest success is his Wham! biography, which he writes after George’s death. In 2020, “Last Christmas” tops the charts for the first time.

Once upon a time there were two friends. One taped a note to his bedroom door saying “Wake me up before you go”, obvious misspellings by a drunk person. The other read the note, crossed out an “up” and made it a worldwide hit.

“Wham!” now streaming on Netflix.