Childhood and adolescence
The singer, who became world famous and beloved by millions of fans, was born in the UK on June 25, 1963. The town of Finchley became his small homeland. The future star, known under the creative pseudonym George Michael, was actually named Georgios Kyriakos Panayiota. His father is Cypriot - he emigrated to England in the 50s and here married Leslie Harrison. My father eventually became the manager of a small family restaurant, where he was treated to his favorite Greek cuisine. Mom was a wonderful dancer. There were three children in the family - Georgios had two older sisters, Yoda and Melanie. It was the sisters who raised their brother - the parents were constantly busy.
As a child, the future sex symbol had a lot of problems with his appearance and relationships among his peers - the boy had poor vision and wore glasses, was overweight and for this constantly became the object of ridicule and attacks from his classmates. His parents forced him to learn to play the violin and this caused protest from the guy. But he began dreaming about his stellar career from childhood - from the age of 7, the guy demonstrated his musical abilities, reproducing melodies and songs that were then heard on the radio. My father didn't like this much. But my mother supported her son in this hobby - she once gave him a voice recorder, which had a recording option.
Biography
The legendary British singer, formerly of Wham! George Michael was born on June 25, 1963 in the UK, in the city of Finchley, which is located in North London. In fact, the name George Michael is nothing more than a stage name, since in reality the artist bore the name Georgios Kyriakos Panayiotou.
George's father, Kyriakos Panayiotou, was a Cypriot who emigrated to Britain in the 50s and married an Englishwoman, Leslie Angold Harrison. His father ran a small restaurant with Greek cuisine, and his mother was a dancer.
George Michael as a child
In addition to George, the family had two more children - sisters Melanie and Yoda, who were older than him. As a result, it was the sisters who were involved in raising the child, since the parents did not have time for this due to being very busy at work.
The image of a sex symbol in adulthood runs counter to what the singer was like as a child - George Michael was forced to wear glasses due to poor eyesight; his build could not be called athletic, which is why he was constantly attacked by his peers. To all the problems was added the need to learn to play the violin, which the future star really did not like.
George Michael in his youth | Smooth Radio
Michael wanted to become a star since childhood, literally from the age of 7, but playing the violin did not bring much pleasure, especially since he was left-handed. At that time, George repeated or tried to reproduce all the tunes he heard on the radio. The father did not share his son’s hobbies, unlike his mother, who provided the strongest support in his career and gave him a voice recorder with a recording function.
The singer and his subsequent style were strongly influenced by the group Queen and Elton John. A sharp change in life came after moving to Hertfordshire, entering a new school and meeting Andrew Ridgeley, who had Egyptian roots. The acquaintance happened in 1975; Ridgeley was specially assigned to Michael to help him get comfortable. This became a turning point in the artist’s life.
Music that burst into his life
The boy was delighted with the songs performed by Elton John; he liked the style of the then incredibly popular group Queen. With the family moving to Hertfordshire and entering a new school, a significant change in the boy’s fate occurred. Here in 1975 he met a native of Egypt, Andrew Ridgeley, who supervised him and helped him get used to his new place. David Austin eventually joined them and the three began performing covers of Beatles songs in a subway crossing. There was no time left for study - music began to dominate Georgios' life and became the defining love of his life. The guys, having also invited Paul Riggi and Andrew Leaver to join the team, created the team The Executive. It was a useful experience and on the basis of this group, over time, the duet Wham! appeared, which brought real popularity. By this time, the future star had changed in appearance - he stopped wearing glasses and lost a lot of weight. In 1982, the creative pseudonym George Michael appeared, under which he was recognized throughout the world and which brought deafening fame.
Music career
Duet Wham! - This is the image of young and carefree playmakers. During this period, songs were released that became the band's calling cards. The first album Fantastic appeared. Over time, the image of the musicians changed, a contract was signed with the Epic label, and a new album, Make It Big, was released. After this there were two more years of triumph. But at some point, George was no longer satisfied with the image of a teenager with no worries and hooligan tendencies imposed by the producers. At the peak of their popularity, the group broke up and Michael began a solo career.
His debut was the song “Careless Whisper” in 1984, and since 1986 he released his first solo album, Faith, which received a Grammy. There were ups and downs, litigation with the Sony record label. The breakthrough was the scandalous video Freeek!, which appeared in 2003 and the subsequent release of the album Patience. In 2006, the singer went on a concert tour around the world. In 2014, the sixth, and last, album “Symphonica” was released.
Personal life
First in narrow circles, and then more and more loudly, they began to talk about Michael’s unconventional sexual orientation. He himself did not advertise his relationships with men for a long time - they say that he was wary of condemnation and misunderstanding from his family. In 1991, he had an affair with Anselmo Feleppa, a designer who “rewarded” him with HIV. Later this became a reason to believe that the name of George Michael and the cause of death, AIDS, are connected.
The singer indirectly spoke about his love for men in the album “Older”. He changed his image - leather things, short haircut. It was a difficult period - his mother, who was his guardian angel, died, and there were constant attacks from the media. In 1998, the singer made up his mind and openly declared that he was gay. It is known that George had a relationship with Kenny Goss.
The end of the biography of George Michael. Cause of death
George Michael passed away at the end of December 2016. He was 53. His body was found in his own bed. According to doctors, the musician died of a heart attack. Ironically, the death of the talented performer occurred precisely on Christmas, which was sung by him in his legendary composition Last Christmas. This song became prophetic for him.
George Michael was buried in Highgate Churchyard, just outside the British capital. A few months later, it became known that the singer had repeatedly ended up in a clinic for drug addicts. The last time he went there was in 2015...
Cause of death and will
How did George Michael die? This question worried his fans and ordinary people who were waiting for juicy details. Someone put forward a version of AIDS, someone blamed drugs - the singer really suffered and tried to get rid of this addiction. And yet - why did George Michael die? After all, he was only 53 years old and he reached incredible heights on the musical Olympus, had wealth and love. At the same time, the singer was actively involved in charitable activities, but never advertised it and did not turn the impulses of his soul into PR.
He helped various charities, supported HIV-infected people, cancer patients, and a British helpline for teenagers and children. George even worked as a volunteer at a shelter for homeless people. He was worth more than $120 million at the time of his death and owned mansions in New York, London, Sydney and Oxfordshire, where he died. He bequeathed these funds to his sisters and numerous godchildren, in whose lives he always took an active part. Also, the funds were transferred at his will to charitable foundations.
As it turned out, singer George Michael, whose cause of death was a heart attack, suffered from dilated cardiomyopathy with myocarditis and fatty liver. His last lover, Kenny Goss, who found him at home in Oxfordshire, believes that his addiction to drugs led to this. On December 29, an autopsy was performed on the body of George Michael, the cause of death was named as heart failure.
Some celebrity fans are wondering where George Michael is buried? His ashes rest in Highgate Cemetery, next to his mother's grave. Due to lengthy examinations, the ceremony took place only on March 29, 2020 in a chamber setting.
George Michael: Lived Sinfully and Died Funny
Well, maybe it’s not funny, but it’s unclear how and why.
Although doctors more than three years ago, when the once popular singer left this world (he died on December 25, 2020 at the age of 53 - Note "AN"), and called the cause of death a disease of the heart muscle, he was buried only three months later - when the preliminary analyzes were ready. Preliminary? Yes, the final verdict has not yet been made, and few people believe in the official version. Wake me up
In the last years of his life, George Michael, although he lived without the belly, jowls and double chin, common for men 50+, still looked so-so.
Short-haired (to hide his thinning hair), with a mustache and beard, he rather vaguely resembled that white-toothed handsome man from the distant nineties, for whom girls went crazy. In fact, George Michael (his real name is Georgios Kyriakos Panayotou) - the son of an English woman and a Greek immigrant from Cyprus - wore glasses at school, was chubby, shy, terribly worried about the fact that the two eyebrows on the bridge of his nose were connected into one. He would have remained an unknown Panayotov if not for his school friend Andrew Ridgeley , also a half-breed, in whose veins flowed British, Italian and Egyptian blood. This fashionista was the ringleader and pulled Georgiy, that is, George, onto the stage.
However, the friends might not have moved anywhere beyond school discos if they had not been invited to perform on a television show. The day after their duet called “Wem!” (“Bams!”) famously danced and sang George Michael’s song “Wake me up when you leave” , they woke up famous. However, less than five years later the duo broke up: subsequently the half-Egyptian never made it anywhere, and George Michael became a world star. He released his first solo disc at the age of 24, the record became the best-selling not just anywhere, but in the “States itself”! But after his second record didn't sell out so well, he blamed none other than Sony Music for poorly advertising and "promoting" HIS work.
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When, six years later, he finally “gave birth” to a new disc, he discovered that they had almost forgotten about him, that his rhythms and songs were “old man’s.” Then George Michael started talking about how he was tired of frivolous dance songs, that he had matured and wanted something different. Well, he really matured, but, as it turned out later, it was not only about the rhythms . In fact, during the forced downtime, George Michael decided on his sexual preferences, and in 1996, when everyone still imagined him as a hero-lover, only those closest to him knew that this was not the case.
If uncle sleeps with uncle
In the recently published autobiographical book by Andrew Ridgeley, the second member of “Wem!”, he recalls that at first there were no signs of trouble: after school, the two of them leafed through with interest the erotic magazines that Michael hid in the yard behind the house. During the years of hysteria around “Wem!” It was strange for him to observe that George Michael, unlike himself, did not take advantage of this and did not drag fans into bed, that the singer had only three . During a joint vacation in Ibiza, he met a group of guys who were clearly gay, after which he talked only about them all the time, spent time only with them. And after some time, George Michael admitted to Andrew that he himself was one of “these,” but no one should know about it.
In general, while women were fantasizing about hot nights with him, Michael was already sleeping with a supposedly Brazilian fashion designer. The “great love” between two 30-year-old men lasted until the Brazilian left for his homeland to find out the cause of his frequent ailments. The Englishman was left waiting for news from his beloved, and the news came: a blood test showed that the “love of his life” had AIDS. “Pedro” died six months later, and George Michael wrote a song dedicated to the South American, “ Jesus to a Child,” which soon became a hit. Michael had to grieve for his deceased husband (or wife, go figure) alone - indeed, you couldn’t tell anyone about the cause of grief. Therefore, wine, antidepressants, marijuana, and cocaine appeared on the singer’s menu. And crack is the smoking version of cocaine, considered the most destructive.
It’s not surprising that after this, George Michael began to yearn for adventure. And although by that time he had already slept with another - an American, whom he “glued together” three years after the Brazilian’s funeral, one late evening in a public toilet in Los Angeles he pestered a “pretty” Latino with an offer of oral sex. However, he turned out to be a policeman in disguise . The warbler's arrest made the news, and the Briton was forced to admit his homosexuality. The confession did not look like an apology: no, he snapped, flaunted it, claimed that he didn’t care, but there was never any talk about his former popularity. No sales, no excitement at concerts.
So, the Briton’s busy schedule is a thing of the past. What could the ex-idol do? Is it possible to “puff”. In his own words, at one time he smoked 20 rolled-up weed cigarettes a day, but, realizing that it could drive him crazy, he cut it down to a few pieces. Michael was caught more than once driving his Range Rover while stoned or drunk. Once he fell asleep at an intersection, blocking traffic, another time he drove into a tree, and a third time into a store window. He later explained to reporters that he simply went a little too far with sleeping pills and antidepressants. Of course, few people believed in this, and after some time, merry fellows - English journalists, realizing that the bored millionaire’s bad habits had not disappeared, provoked him into another “casual sex” in a London park.
An inglorious end
It is clear that after such a “pale” the American “abandoned” the singer. And Michael became friends with a younger, two-meter Lebanese hairdresser. On December 25, 2020, at the agreed time, he approached George Michael’s mansion to go to dinner together, no one opened the door for him, the hairdresser climbed into the house and discovered an already numb body. Once again, breaking news, condolences, memories and, finally, a funeral. However, this is not the end of the story.
After the singer’s death, the Arab settled in the star’s mansion under the pretext that he had nowhere to live, but he loved his partner so much all these four years! The family - and Michael is survived by two older sisters (57 and 56 years old, recently died) and a living father (80 years old, hates homosexuals, by the way) - at first did not object to this, because, presumably, they were afraid that the Lebanese might talk too much to journalists and intimate things about brother and son. But then, when things began to disappear from the mansion, the hairdresser was evicted . And he, finding himself literally on the street with two bags of clothes, and even finding out that in the will that Michael left, there was not a word about him, he spoke differently. He didn’t talk about how wonderful he was, but that George Michael didn’t want to live, tried to commit suicide five times, and his last attempt was successful. That he died not from heart disease, but from an overdose of hard drugs. That he had AIDS. That he, a drug addict, did not write any songs himself, but bought them from others and attributed the authorship to himself .
Now about the wealth that George Michael left behind. These are two houses in London, a horse farm, a collection of paintings and antiques, including the famous piano on which John Lennon composed the song “Imagine”. At a recent auction, several lots from this collection were sold for $15 million . And to the 200 million dollars that the singer earned from selling records and touring, over these three years another five were added from the release of posthumous albums. It’s not surprising that after such numbers, “what about me!” cried not only the Arab, but also the American lover.
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