❚ NEWLY RELEASED JAN 31, 2011: A remastered version of George Michael’s debut solo album, Faith, from November 1987, is out on Epic/Legacy in the UK and tomorrow the US. There is also a DVD featuring a TV special from 1987, George Michael and Jonathan Ross Have Words, a 25-minute Music Money Love Faith EPK, plus seven remastered promo videos. All available through Michael’s international online retail store.
Faith won a Grammy Award as album of its year, for which Michael wrote and produced every track except one, among them six top-five singles. The first released, I Want Your Sex, went to No 3 in the chart and not unexpectedly caused censorship problems around the world. The daddy of US pop radio hosts, Casey Kasem, refused to say the full song title on air, referring to it only as “the new single from George Michael”. Having gone solo, Michael was after all trying to lay the ghost of his teenybopper image so successully established in Wham! at the age of 20 with his best friend Andrew Ridgeley. Sample their first Top of The Pops appearance as Young Guns, which hit No 3 in 1982, below.
Michael had of course already enjoyed two UK chart-toppers, Careless Whispers in 1984 and A Different Corner in 1986, and in all has achieved eight No 1 singles in the US, his last in 1991. Before all that stuff happened.
❚ ONLY THREE MUSICIANS FROM THE 1980s are included in the annual Rich List of Britain’s top 50 music millionaires, published today by The Sunday Times. The richest musician of the decade who holds his own amid the older gods of rock is singer-songwriter George Michael who is worth £90m ($138m) today. He sits at No 25 in the ST’s top 50. George is pictured above in Wham!’s Club Tropicana video (where “the drinks are free”). His group’s “pure pop” epitomised the sybaritic style which by 1983 was signalling the divide in British music between electronic earnestness and full-on hedonism.
The other two richest stars from the 80s are each estimated to be worth a relatively puny £35m ($54m). They are Lancastrian Mick Hucknall of Simply Red (their summer tour climaxes with a farewell concert on Dec 19 and is booking now), and pop diva Kylie Minogue who found fame in the UK through the Australian TV soap, Neighbours. The Sunday Times justifies Kylie’s presence in this UK list, as someone who often seems “more British than the British”. She herself has regarded the UK as “my adopted home” almost since 1988 when her debut single, I Should Be So Lucky, went to No 1 and set her on the path to becoming the most successful female artist in the UK charts. She was honoured by the Queen with an OBE in 2008.
Simply Red’s Hucknall: a December farewell
Since the 2009 Rich List, three 80s stars have dropped out from the top 50 musicians: Annie Lennox, Simple Minds vocalist Jim Kerr and Sade – though her sensational album comeback this year is likely to be reflected in next year’s list. Astonishingly the creative genius behind Kylie and the huge stable of Stock Aitken and Waterman acts – Pete Waterman – last appeared in the Rich List in 2007.
Should we assume creativity does not equate to profitability? From a musician’s perspective the 80s have been the least lucrative decade in pop history, apart from the Noughties from which only TV impresario Simon Cowell emerges as a multi-millionaire (£165m). Inevitably, older musicians have had longer in which to sell records and accrue proceeds, so the 1960s yield 20 musicians in the Rich List who are still millionaires today, led by Sir Paul (£475m, $731m), Sir Mick (£190m) and Sir Elton (£185m). From the 1970s there are ten in the top 50, with Sting way out in front (£180m).
Among the richest artists from the 90s is Victoria (“Posh Spice”) Beckham (£145m whose fortune the ST oddly entwines with her footballing husband’s). Robbie Williams is now worth £85m and Gary Barlow £35m – both started out in boyband Take That. The Gallagher brothers of Oasis are worth £55m, and Jay Kay of Jamiroquai £35m.
The Rich List names 13 moguls ruling the UK biz, led by former songwriter and Warner Music Group chairman, the American Edgar Bronfman who has made his home in London, and is worth £1,640m ($2,522m). The ST reports him as being “well placed to snap up the beleagured EMI”, effectively Britain’s last homegrown record company, founded in 1931.
Leaders among the younger British businessmen are Simon Fuller (£350m, $540m), the former Spice Girls manager who struck gold as creator of TV’s Idol franchise which has been sold worldwide during the past decade, and Jamie Palumbo (£150m, $231m) who founded the Ministry of Sound clubbing empire.
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MORE INTERESTING THAN MOST PEOPLE’S FANTASIES — THE SWINGING EIGHTIES 1978-1984
They didn’t call themselves New Romantics, or the Blitz Kids – but other people did.
“I’d find people at the Blitz who were possible only in my imagination. But they were real” — Stephen Jones, hatmaker, 1983. (Illustration courtesy Iain R Webb, 1983)
“The truth about those Blitz club people was more interesting than most people’s fantasies” — Steve Dagger, pop group manager, 1983
PRAISE INDEED!
“See David Johnson’s fabulously detailed website Shapers of the 80s to which I am hugely indebted” – Political historian Dominic Sandbrook, in his book Who Dares Wins, 2019
“The (velvet) goldmine that is Shapers of the 80s” – Verdict of Chris O’Leary, respected author and blogger who analyses Bowie song by song at Pushing Ahead of the Dame
“The rather brilliant Shapers of the 80s website” – Dylan Jones in his Sweet Dreams paperback, 2021
A UNIQUE HISTORY
➢ WELCOME to the Swinging 80s ➢ THE BLOG POSTS on this front page report topical updates ➢ ROLL OVER THE MENU at page top to go deeper into the past ➢ FOR NEWS & MONTH BY MONTH SEARCH scroll down this sidebar
❏ Header artwork by Kat Starchild shows Blitz Kids Darla Jane Gilroy, Elise Brazier, Judi Frankland and Steve Strange, with David Bowie at centre in his 1980 video for Ashes to Ashes
VINCENT ON AIR 2024
✱ Deejay legend Robbie Vincent has returned to JazzFM on Sundays 1-3pm… Catch Robbie’s JazzFM August Bank Holiday 2020 session thanks to AhhhhhSoul with four hours of “nothing but essential rhythms of soul, jazz and funk”.
TOLD FOR THE FIRST TIME
◆ Who was who in Spandau’s break-out year of 1980? The Invisible Hand of Shapersofthe80s draws a selective timeline for The unprecedented rise and rise of Spandau Ballet –– Turn to our inside page
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UNTOLD BLITZ STORIES
✱ If you thought there was no more to know about the birth of Blitz culture in 1980 then get your hands on a sensational book by an obsessive music fan called David Barrat. It is gripping, original and epic – a spooky tale of coincidence and parallel lives as mind-tingling as a Sherlock Holmes yarn. Titled both New Romantics Who Never Were and The Untold Story of Spandau Ballet! Sample this initial taster here at Shapers of the 80s
CHEWING THE FAT
✱ Jawing at Soho Radio on the 80s clubland revolution (from 32 mins) and on art (@55 mins) is probably the most influential shaper of the 80s, former Wag-club director Chris Sullivan (pictured) with editor of this website David Johnson
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The other two richest stars from the 80s are each estimated to be worth a relatively puny £35m ($54m). They are Lancastrian Mick Hucknall of 
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