George Michael Biography
George Michael Biography:George Michael (born Georgios Kyriacos Panayiotou; 25 June 1963 – 25 December 2016) was an English singer-songwriter and record producer. Regarded as a pop culture icon,he is one of the best-selling musicians of all time, with his sales estimated at between 100 million to 125 million records worldwide.Michael was known as a creative force in songwriting,vocal performance,and visual presentation.He achieved 10 number-one songs on the US Billboard Hot 100 and 13Nwajagu Samuel Biography: Family, Age, Early Life, Education, Career, Net worth number-one songs on the UK singles chart. Michael won numerous music awards, including two Grammy Awards, three Brit Awards, twelve Billboard Music Awards, and four MTV Video Music Awards. He was listed among Billboard’s the “Greatest Hot 100 Artists of All Time” and Rolling Stone’s the “200 Greatest Singers of All Time”.The Radio Academy named him the most played artist on British radio during the period 1984–2004.Michael was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2023.
George Michael Early Life
George Michael was born Georgios Kyriacos Panayiotou (Greek: Γεώργιος Κυριάκος Παναγιώτου) on 25 June 1963, in East Finchley. He was the only son and the youngest child of three.His father, Kyriacos “Jack” Panayiotou, was a Greek Cypriot restaurateur who emigrated from Patriki, Cyprus, to England in the 1950s. His mother, Lesley Angold (born Harrison, died 1997),was an English dancer.In June 2008, Michael told the Los Angeles Times that his maternal grandmother was Jewish, but she had married a non-Jewish man and raised their children with no knowledge of their Jewish background due to her fear during World War II.
Michael spent most of his childhood in Kingsbury, London, in the home his parents bought soon after his birth; he attended Roe Green Junior School and Kingsbury High School.Michael had two sisters: Yioda (born 1958) and Melanie (1960–2019).On BBC’s Desert Island Discs, Michael said that his interest in music followed an injury to his head around the age of eight.
George Michael Career
After a brief break from music, George released the single ‘Jesus to a Child’ in 1994, the song was a tribute to his lover, Anselmo Feleppa, who had died the previous year. The single went straight to number one in the UK and seven in the US. Its follow-up, ‘Fastlove’ was also a UK number one. The accompanying album, Older, was Michael’s first in six years.
George Michael’s greatest hits package, Ladies & Gentlemen: The Best of George Michael was released in 1998. Songs from the Last Century was released in 1999 and featured a number of re-workings of songs by the likes of Frank Sinatra and Sting.
Patience, released in 2004 was George Michael’s first album of original material in eight years. The lead single ‘Shoot The Dog’ sparked some controversy for its open criticism of the British and US involvement in the war in Iraq.
George’s second greatest hits release, Twentyfive, was released in 2006 and was a number one hit in the UK. The 2-CD set contained some songs from the Wham! era as well as three new songs, including a duet with Mutya Buena of Sugababes and a version of ‘Heal the Pain’, recorded with Sir Paul McCartney. George undertook a 50-date arena tour to promote the album.
In 2008, George Michael made his acting debut in the comedy-drama ‘Eli Stone’ with Jonny Lee Miller. He also released a new song called ‘December Song’, and in 2011 unveiled a cover of New Order’s ‘True Faith’ for Comic Relief. That year he was on the first ever James Corden ‘Carpool Karaoke’ sketch before the host took it to ‘The Late Late Show’.
George Michael Personal life
In the past, there has been a great deal of speculation surrounding George Michael’s sexuality. During his time in Wham! there were a number of tabloid articles which speculated on his relationships with actresses such as Whoopi Goldberg and Brooke Shields. His homosexuality was later made public and George has stated that he hid his sexuality because he was worried about the impact it may have on his mother.
In 1998, George Michael was arrested in Los Angeles, for ‘engaging in a lewd act’ in a public toilet. He was fined $810 for the incident and was forced to undertake 80 hours of community service. The video for his song ‘Outside’ was a humourous take on the incident and featured men dressed as policemen kissing in a public toilet. The arresting officer, Rodriguez, took George Michael to court, claiming that the video mocked him and that he had been slandered by Michael in interviews. The case was dismissed by the courts.
In 2006, George Michael was arrested for possession of cannabis. He was then involved in a number of incidents in which he was discovered asleep at the wheel of his car. He has been banned from driving and given a community service order.
In 2008, he was once again arrested for possession of drugs, but the following year insisted he had cut down on his cannabis use. In 2010, he was arrested after crashing his car while under the influence and served four weeks of an eight week prison sentence.
In 2011, he went to hospital with a viral infection and chest pains, and it later emerged that he had suffered a bout of pneumonia. He revealed that he had undergone a tracheotomy while in a coma, and claimed that he awoke with a brief spell of foreign accent syndrome. In 2013, he fell out of his car while driving on a motorway and was taken to hospital.
George Michael died on Christmas day in 2016 and was discovered by his partner of four years Fadi Fawaz. The cause of death was attributed to heart failure
Read Also: Nwajagu Samuel Biography: Family, Age, Early Life, Education, Career, Net worth
George Michael Death
Michael died on December 25, 2016, at the age of 53. An autopsy later revealed that the pop star had died from natural causes related to heart and liver disease. Michael’s partner Fawaz found him dead at his home in Oxfordshire on Christmas morning.”It is with great sadness that we can confirm our beloved son, brother and friend George passed away peacefully at home over the Christmas period,” read a statement by his publicist.
Following his death, many charities and individuals posted on social media about Michael’s generous philanthropic acts and how he often donated his time and much of his wealth anonymously. The pop star avoided making headlines for his many acts of kindness, which included volunteering at a homeless shelter, paying for a woman’s fertility treatments and tipping a waitress thousands of dollars to help her pay for her nursing school debts. He also anonymously gave millions of dollars to charities, including Childline, a counseling service for children in the U.K. “No one outside the charity knew how much he gave to the nation’s most vulnerable children,” said Dame Esther Rantzen, the charity’s founder, said in an interview with the British news outlet ITN.