George Michael
Forum, Inglewood
Wednesday, June 25th

Personable and poignant, George Michael was a far cry from the cocky and sometimes even smug young pop star of the late ’80s and ’90s, during his recent appearance in the Los Angeles area at the Forum in Inglewood. 

Michael is, of course, older now, and so are his fans, to varying degrees. The L.A. show drew one-time teeny-boppers from his early days in Wham!, their husbands or boyfriends, gay couples, and a few younger folk, though it’s safe to say the crowd was 30s-40s.  

This is Michael’s first North American tour in 17 years, a decade after the “incident,” with many years since stateside hits, though Europe has stuck by him. Michael told the Forum audience he hadn’t performed at the venue in 20 years, back when he was 25.  Now 45–on the the day of the show, in fact, and the crowd sang several impromptu “Happy Birthdays”–he truly seems comfortable with himself, self-effacing yet also musically bold, and it showed through much of the two-part, two-hour concert which played out in part like his latest career look-back anthology, Twenty Five.

Michael looks like, well, a UK Soccer Dad now (doesn’t matter if you’re straight or gay, you can still look like one)–a well-dressed one, though. And despite his coming out more than decade ago, women still reached for him, screamed and yelped for him (”Oh mom, Dad says you did, admit it”). Ah, the unattainable.

His low-key opener “Waiting (Reprise)” set the tone of his return with lines such as “Is it too late to try again?”

For the Wham! fans, there was the bouncy Motownish bop of “I’m Your Man” (black and white footage of him and Andrew Ridgely back in the day on the video screens) and the funky pop or “Everything She Wants,” while ’90s thump-stuff such as “Fastlove” and “Star People,” which sounded right in line with the likes of The Scissor Sisters, had the audience on its feet too.

The lighting was all razzle-dazzle, a massive, curved screen coming up from the floor beneath him and reaching up the three-level scaffolding, where his band offered deft and full-blown touches to mix of dance numbers and ballads.

In a light moment, he picked on annoying talk-show shrink Dr. Phil, supposedly scowling during the set, up to that point, though his wife was having a fine time, apparently. “I think maybe you should see somebody about that,”  Michael said, deadpan.

His first great moment of the night didn’t come with those big hits past or flash dancer numbers:  With just a piano playing, he joined his six male and female backing singers in a circle for a stunning gospel-dipped version of “One More Try,” that theme of renewal surfacing again.

And things got even better with the second half of the night (and intermission clock counted down the 20-minute break). Not longer after his Bo Diddley beat ditty “Faith,” he turned to a jazzy detour: Nina Simone’s “Feeling Good,” which he’d performed on the ABC TV series Eli Stone.  Then he walked down the smaller stage at the center of the arena, joined by just a couple of members of his backing band for his torchy treatment of The Police’s “Roxanne” (from his 1999 covers set Songs From the Last Century), followed by an equally smokey take on his own “Kissing A Fool.” 

A dancey trio to close out the main show included “Amazing,” dedicated to his longtime partner, and the cheeky “Outside,” wearing a policeman’s uniform, his only real costume move of the night and an obvious comment on the ‘98 arrest.   He came back with a first encore of back-to-back ballads in an emotional “Praying for Time” and the inevitable audience nostalgia sing-along of guilty feet that got no rhythm, “Careless Whisper.”

After more birthday singing from the crowd and his band as well, along with Bo Derek bringing out a cake, he said there was one more song they hadn’t done.  No, not “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go” (maybe next time, as it seems to even make him wince now, though it’s still ridiculous pop candy).  It was “Freedom ‘90, his song about personal liberation and, of course, more dancing.

Despite a recent appearance on the unctuous American Idol, Michael has said he figures his pop star days are done at 45, expecting a “a quieter life” out of the spotlight. But if the Forum show is any indication, he doesn’t worry about appealing to today’s pop kids; he has plenty of loyal fans his age, or close to it, who’ve stood by him worldwide, and a U.S. audience that’s still out there for him too.  He may not quite have the legacy of some of rock’s greatest figures, but he’s certainly far more than a pop star now, a pop icon in his own UK and elsewhere, while the U.S. is catching up with him again. 

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