It may not have escaped your notice that a lot of famous musicians - particularly singers - are not without ego, so it’s perhaps not surprising that when Simply Red frontman Mick Hucknall learned that fellow pop-soul boy George Michael was recording a duet with one of his heroes he was insanely jealous.
This would have been in the mid-'80s, when Simply Red were just breaking through. The hero in question was none other than the Queen of Soul herself, Aretha Franklin: she linked up with Michael on I Knew You Were Waiting (For Me), the pop-soul anthem that hit number 1 in both the US and UK in 1987.
