From Michael Jackson to Whitney Houston, Madonna to Prince, the 1980s were the decade in which pop became a visual product. Leather jackets, high-waisted trousers, dramatic headbands; it was as much about the fashion as the music. It might’ve been strange, then, to see one of the biggest acts of the Eighties emerging from suburban Hertfordshire. These two gawky teenage boys, sons of immigrant families, would become a sensation among adolescent girls and, 40 years on, the subject of a glossy new Netflix documentary.
Wham! is the story of – you guessed it – Wham!, the pop duo consisting of Georgios Panayiotou, aka George Michael, and Andrew Ridgeley, aka the one who isn’t George Michael. Over the course of four eventful years, Wham! went from being an obscure teeny-bopping act to one of the premier draws in music. Naturally, this short, brightly burning career came with a bit of emotional turbulence along the way. “The human, unpredictable mess,” says Michael in voiceover. “All of it was pop.”
