On the 30th of October 1987, the then-closeted gay icon George Michael released his most successful album: Faith. While Faith was released more than 10 years before Michael publicly came out as gay, we can see it today as both an important moment in Michael’s career and in queer music.
Faith has always been an important album to me. I am deeply in love with the . In it, Michael plays the guitar and dances to the tune while donning in a pair of torn jeans and a leather jacket. At first glance, he looks like your typical masculine ’80s guy, but a closer look reveals a string of pearls attached to his jacket, and the iconic cross earring in his left ear.
For me, it is probably the sexiest film clip ever made, but listening to Faith over the years, I’ve realised that my connection to the album goes beyond my attraction to Michael. Released during a time in which he was clearly struggling with his sexuality, it is full of important nods to the gay community, interwoven with the intricate difficulties of being a closeted gay superstar.
Faith was Michael’s first ever solo album, following four hugely successful albums as part of the pop duo Wham! Where Wham! – something Michael was desperate to get away from – Faith was his attempt to go solo, and to be taken seriously.
By this time, Michael had been privately coming to terms with his sexuality for years, coming out to close friends as . When he released Faith, he was dating the American make-up artist Kathy Jeung. Outside of his relationship with Jeung, however, he was struggling with fears over the HIV/AIDS crisis. In a 2004 interview, Michael explained that he actively decided to stop sleeping with women because of the crisis, “I decided I had to stop, which I did when I began to worry about AIDS, which was becoming prevalent in Britain. Although I had always had safe sex, I didn’t want to sleep with a woman without telling her I was bisexual. I felt that would be irresponsible.”
These complex issues run deep through Faith, with the titular single probably the clearest indication of this. Confronted with the HIV/AIDS crisis in the 1980s, gay men , attempting in part to rid themselves of the stereotype of being weak and diseased. Michael’s dress code – his ripped jeans, beard, and leather jacket – epitomised this look, which he then embellished with his iconic cross earring, which . He highlighted, to a huge mass audience, different ways of representing masculinity, representing the exact sorts of experiments that were occurring within gay communities at the time.
These nods to the HIV/AIDS crisis run throughout the album. Music and film critic Armond White Faith is part of a set of albums that formed part of an era of ‘gay solidarity’ during the HIV/AIDS era. For White, the second big hit of the album, “”, is probably the biggest indication of this solidary. “Father Figure” is exceptional as it challenges the standard concepts of intimacy and love of the time, but in many ways I think “” is the most important song of the album. In the song, Michael sings openly and positively about sex, with the film clip featuring his then-girlfriend Kathy Jeung.
At this point in time, , with many blaming the open nature of gay sexuality for the spread of the disease. Even though “I Want Your Sex” was sung with a heterosexual sensibility, with Michael writing “explore monogamy” on Jeung’s back, the very existence of a song that spoke positively about sex in this way was important. Linked with the nods to the queer community throughout the album, “I Want Your Sex” challenged attacks on queer sex, even if through a heterosexual lens.
In fact, it is this heterosexual lens that I believe makes Faith such an interesting and important album. One could easily argue that the heterosexual sensibilities in Faith negate its queerness. In some ways they could represent a man who, at the peak of his fame, was too fearful to be out, which may not be something we want to celebrate.
To me, this highlights the complexity of the queer story. Faith represents everything Michael was at the time – a closeted man coming to terms with his sexuality and the impact it would have on his life. It’s done in a way that’s creative, shows solidarity, and is entirely queer. In many ways, Faith was a precursor to the gay icon we knew and love to this day. One can easily draw a line between “I Want Your Sex” and the huge hit “”, which, released in 1998, poked fun at his arrest for having sex in a public beat.
This is why, more than six years after Michael’s death, Faith is an album we should all still be playing.
