What's George Michael's greatest song?

Monkey

Baboon

I Knew You Were Waiting (For Me)

I'm assuming he sang one of mine at some point, right?

If so? That's your answer.

........

Never Gonna Give You Up

"Cowboys and Angels" always moves me.

Praying for Time

You Have Been Loved

Father Figure

Father Figure, easily. Followed by the live version of Don't Let the Sun Go Down On Me with Elton.

Freeek!

Wham Rap for sure. It has such a beautifully crafted melody and the lyrics are so deep and have so many layers. Look at the chorus, poetry st it’s best...

Wham! bam! I am! a man! Job or no job, You can't tell me that i'm not. Do! you! Enjoy what you do? If not, just stop! Don't stay there and rot!

Mother's Pride

I've always loved Something to Save - his voice really soars.

Father Figure

Everything She Wants

A Different Corner

The Edge of Heaven

Last Christmas

Praying For Time

One More Try

"Freedom"

You will all Mary! me for pretension, but I don't care, it must be said to set the record straight - the uncomfortable, true, real and painful answer is 'Precious Box'.

My fucking Gods, that song. It's an agonisingly sad, prescient, and almost frightening. It is an abyss of sound set to words cut out of GM's heart. Listening to it is akin to gazing up into the night sky, and then realising with a slam of awareness and mortal dread that the black star-studded heavens you see are in fact endless airless tracts of nothingness dotted with gaseous clouds that would incinerate you miles off.

In its shimmering eerie intelligence and transcendental feel, I would compare it to a more forbidding dark and mournful song by Peter Gabriel, say 'San Jacinto' or 'The Tower That Ate People'. This is just a hunch but, to me 'Precious Box' is one of those songs that seemed to frighten even George himself, with how it reached far further and deeper into places beyond anything else he ever recorded - when he wrote it, the mission was obviously no longer about the singing, or the pop palatability, but the stark purity of truth and expressing it in a way that touched a nerve.

There is an unflinching and clammy honesty in the vocals, that keen above the spinning alarms, unrelenting hissing drums, and drone of the haunting strings of the instrumental. The complexity of the lyrics exceeds any other by GM, to the point that it's poetry. To read, 'Precious Box' is the raging cynical lament of a soul who is not only lost, but has been totally forgotten, completely warped, and has abandoned himself to the depravity and meaninglessness of his existence. By the end the listener is both desperately sorry for the narrator in his humane yearning and disappointment, and yet also deeply creeped out by his pathetic vampiric overtures and cruel aphorisms (I'm actually surprised it isn't a hit with DL....)

The performance he gave of the song at LIVE 25 changed something in me, fundamentally. From the snow effect of a tv-screen with no signal in the background, to the wash of noise from the effects, to the breathless and wry delivery of the ending line, 'you may wish you could turn back Time' as George hides his face from the crowd....brrrrr, no words.

When I caught this performance, I was in the throes of a deep depression at the time, and seeing and hearing 'Precious Box' done so immediately just exorcised some part of the demon that was riding me. It didn't cure my depression, but it catharsized me, somehow. I cried as I listened; no, not in the fawning fangirl way or the 'yas Kween' way - I mean raw, jagged, broken gasps of painful sobbing that took me off-guard because it felt like something was being torn from my chest.

[quote] Give me your life, give me your life, I want it, because lately it's so freezing out here....

[quote] It's the money or your life; I said, don't you know you can't have both? Take that picture, stop acting so dumb, don't you know that the moment will come I will find someone like you - with something a little extra?

[quote] You may want to strip again, you may want to let me in, you may want to sacrifice, more than you think is fair or right....you may want to think again, you may want to watch your friends, you may want to change your mind.....

Karma Chameleon

I'm with you, OP. But not just the reprise, the whole song.

"Waiting" was not co-written by GM and Jagger/Richards.

"Waiting" is a slower, acoustic reprise of "Waiting For That Day", a song on which he gave Jagger and Richards a writing credit because he sang the title line from their classic "You Can't Always Get What You Want" at the very end of the song. "Waiting", the reprise, is credited to GM alone.

Was there ever a Volume 2?

Gloryholes of London

"Cowboys & Angels," "One More Try" "Through" and on this one I don't think George pulled the line "suddenly the audience is so cruel" out of the air. Everyone can interpret that as they choose.

Two more I'll add which are covers. I think he did a beautiful job on "I'll Remember You" with just a harp accompaniment. The other is "Let Her Down Easy" which also has a beautiful video to go with it. The latter is the last song he released, which unfortunately didn't get very high on the charts.

Waiting is a really underrated song, OP. I still think the answer is "Father Figure," but Waiting is easily in his top 5 and he's vocally in his prime on it.

Jesus To A Child is beautiful and heartbreaking.

R27 If I were to make a list of what I believe George's top ten songs are then "Jesus to a Child" would definitely be on the list. George had a way of writing & expressing grief both through music & lyrics that leaves a true treasure behind for all time. I have to wonder if he knew how much people appreciated it while he was alive. I know when I watch vidoes of him in concert it makes me cringe when people are screaming during these serious songs. It's the same with all the chatter you can hear when it should have been silence during these songs he dedicated to Anselmo & his mom.