Who is your favourite singer or all time? I’m sure you can think of a few, and feel free to contemplate the following about each of them.
Let’s reframe the question.
If you could only listen to ONE singer’s music for the rest of your life, who would you pick?
Now, if you’re asking me who I think is my favourite singer, it’s probably going to be someone like Stevie Wonder. But if I could ONLY listen to Stevie for the rest of my life… I’d get pretty tired of his music pretty quickly. Once you’ve heard half a dozen of Stevie’s songs, you’ve heard more or less his whole back catalogue.
If we’re asking which artist has the widest range of styles, I’d probably say someone like John Mayer… but again, once you’ve heard half a dozen of his songs, you’ve heard most of what he generates. Listening to both of these artists’ material on loop for the rest of your life could get pretty fatiguing.
This is where George Michael enters.
In a straight-up head to head of “most technical singers”, or most bombastic performer, he probably would have lost to people like Stevie Wonder, Beyonce, Bruno Mars, etc.
But if we consider the range of art he put out during his life, I’m struggling to think of someone with a greater depth of material with extremely high musical and vocal quality across all of it.
Throughout his career he spanned teen-pop, to gospel, to funk, to rock, to dance-tracks, to smooth jazz, to poetry-set-to-song. And he delivered them all both recognisably as himself, but he never sounds like he’s just repeating the same old schtick on each song.
Have a listen. Here are five of George Michael’s songs that show you just how broad his musical and vocal range was.
1. Freedom
2. One More Try
3. Kissing a fool
4. Wake Me Up (Wham!)
5. Amazing
I don’t think I could get bored
With the above in mind, I think if I could ONLY listen to one singer for the rest of my life, it would have to be George Michael. There is an ocean of material he’s put out, and on any given day you could dive into the musical waters of rock, pop, jazz, soul, gospel, funk, or any of the other genres he laid out in his repertoire.
In this regard, George Michael could well be the greatest singer in terms of how excellent and how listenable the art he created was.