Wham!: Fantastic : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

I first heard Wham! U.K. while I was driving around Los Angeles listening to KROQ. The song "Young Guns" seemed exciting and sophisticated, especially when the singers cross-chanted "Get back! Hands off! Go for it!" It sounded like someone reading vanity license plates to a beat–maybe that's why it sounded so good in the car. At home, on the stereo or the Walkman, Fantastic, the British duo's first album, just sounded like brittle, tinny sub-Human League British technopop. For music that aspires to danceability, the album is surprisingly light-weight; it's bottomless funk, which seems odd for a record that devotes a whole song to the joys of a bass line ("A Ray of Sunshine"). Probably the biggest problem with Wham! is that the group lacks a really distinctive vocalist. George Michael's earnest whine is as synthetic and overly familiar as the cheap keyboards so prevalent nowadays. The only cut that really stands up is "Nothing Looks the Same in the Light," a lush, melodious, almost Bee Geeslike number, on which Michael (who writes most of the group's material with Andy Ridgely) plays all the instruments. Turn up Wham! when they come on the car radio, but remember: they won't sound the same anywhere else.