After the breakup of their first band, The Executive, George Michael and Andrew Ridgeley formed their new duo act, Wham!, in 1981. They signed an awful recording contract with the independent label Innervision in 1982 and released their debut album Fantastic. It climbed as high as the #4 spot on the chart in Britain, and produced four UK Top 10 singles with "Young Guns (Go For It!)," "Wham Rap! (Enjoy What You Do?)," "Bad Boys," and "Club Tropicana," quickly turning the duo into teen idols.
According to Ridgeley, Wham! wasn't supposed to last forever. "Wham! was the expression of our friendship, the humor, the vitality the exuberance of youth," he told Top 2000 a gogo. "It represented the optimism and the drive and the aspiration of youth and the limitless horizons." He added: "Wham! was never going to be middle-age. It wasn't going to be us in our 50s."
Wham! saw little money from the success of their first album because of the unfair contract they signed with Innervision. Michael spoke in his book Bare about not being able to continue with the label: "I realized that it was getting ridiculous to have no money, to have to keep asking for a little bit of money for clothes and stuff, when you know how much you are making for other people." Michael and Ridgeley were forced to give up most of the revenue generated from their first album in order to opt out of their contract and sign a new deal with Sony's sister company, Epic Records.
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