Wham!: Fantastic (remastered) [LEGACY]

Why you'll love it

This reissue is newly remastered. Fantastic went to No. 1 on the UK Albums Chart and carried four hit singles, "Wham Rap! (Enjoy What You Do?)," "Young Guns (Go for It!)," "Bad Boys" and "Club Tropicana."

This edition

• Remastered
• Stereo mix

About the album

George Michael and Andrew Ridgeley met at Bushey Meads School in 1975, played in a ska revival band called the Executive, and then struck out as a duo. They had already written a handful of songs together before cutting their first demo tape, and the ballad "Careless Whisper" dates from those early days too, though it waited for Make It Big. The first spark for "Wham Rap!" came from Ridgeley shouting the hook over "Rapper's Delight" on the dance floor at Bogart's in South Harrow.

Early in the sessions the pair agreed that Michael would write the songs, and he worked at lightning speed, producing alongside Steve Brown. "Club Tropicana" bottles the glamour of London's New Romantic nightclubs, "Young Guns" plays like a three-minute soap opera, "A Ray of Sunshine" and "Come On!" keep the dance floor busy, and "Nothing Looks the Same in the Light" slows things down beautifully. Ridgeley co-wrote two of the tracks, and the whole thing hums with the confidence of two friends who knew exactly where they were going.

Stay with "Young Guns (Go for It!)" past the final fade for a hidden honky-tonk piano coda. Forty-odd years on, "Club Tropicana" can still make a Toronto February feel faintly survivable.

Also at Kops: more Wham! on vinyl · browse Pop

Tracklist

Listen

On Innervision / Columbia / Legacy (cat# 19658815011), a reissue of the 1983 album.