George Michael has led a troubled past decade or so. I’ll admit to having a raging crush on him in the Careless Whisper days. Do you remember listening to that song during skating rink parties? That was the best. George has since been through drug possession and drugged driving arrests. He’s been caught having public sex with strangers in bathrooms. He got clean a few years ago and apologized for letting gay kids down (never mind the lives that he endangered).
Now George has released a new album for the first time in a decade. It’s a live album, but he is a born performer. George still has some issues with his public reputation. He revealed to CNN in 2011 that he is gay, and now he has mixed feelings about doing so. George says his gay life was a lot easier before he came out. He also says his family still thinks he just hasn’t met the “right girl” yet:
George Michael never actually came out intentionally. It took an embarrassing, public arrest for “lewd behavior” in a park in Beverly Hills back in 1998 to do that.
Only after the bust did he feel forced to admit to CNN that yes, he was gay.
“For some strange reason, my gay life didn’t get easier when I came out. Quite the opposite happened, really,” he tells the BBC in an exclusive new interview.
“The press seemed to take some delight that I previously had a ‘straight audience,’ and set about trying to destroy that. And I think some men were frustrated that their girlfriends wouldn’t let go of the idea that George Michael just hadn’t found the ‘right girl’ [yet]. Which is still what a lot of my extended family still think!”
Now single, the superstar, 50, who ended a 13-year relationship with longtime partner Kenny Goss in 2011, said that he didn’t care that he wasn’t open at the time, and will never judge anyone for when he or she decides to come out.
“Because it’s about family,” he says. “In the years when HIV was a killer, any parent of an openly gay person was terrified. I knew my mother well enough that she would spend everyday praying that I didn’t come across that virus. She’d have worried like that.”
The singer, who this week released Symphonica, a new album of live music, has faced plenty of other uphill battles since his public outing, too.
He had two drug-possession related arrests – in 2006 and again in 2008. He also battled a near-death bout of pneumonia in 2011, a year after he suffered a major car crash in which he was arrested for driving under the influence of marijuana.
That arrest, and a month-long stint in jail, inspired him to get sober for good.
“I realized it had to be something to do with me. It shook me out of my denial,” he says. “After that crash happened, I started drug counseling and was two weeks in detox, none of which I made public. It feels so completely behind me now. It really does.”
[From People]
George says he’ll soon be working a “real” album of new songs. He says “one of the things that was going to keep me clean was rewarding myself with music.” I’m glad he’s stayed clean, and George says being released from prison gave him “such a big burst of creativity.” He wants to make a dance album now! A little “Freedom 2015,” perhaps? I hope he’s not serious about his family thinking he just needs to meet the “right girl.” That would be so rude if they really told him such a thing.
Photos courtesy of Fame/Flynet & WENN
