Freedom

In an interview with the Christmas 2009 issue of The Big Issue, George Michael said that when he wrote this song, he knew he had arrived. "When I was 19, I wrote 'Freedom' - the original version - and I thought, 'I can't believe I've just done that!'" he said. "I was absolutely thrilled. Because until then I had no real understanding of my abilities, but with 'Freedom,' I started to take myself seriously as a writer."

The song finds George Michael telling a girl that he wants to fully commit to her, and not have one of those relationships where they can "see other people." When Wham! went to China in April 1985, they became the first Western pop act to play a concert in that country. While there is absolutely nothing political about the song, footage from the trip was used to make a music video for the track, implying a more global meaning of the title. The video opens with about a minute of the band talking under clips of the Chinese people and the countryside. Wham! was one of the biggest acts on MTV at the time, but the network, fearing the short attention spans of their viewers, wanted to cut out the intro (this was before Michael Jackson changed the game with "Thriller"). The band's manager, Simon Napier-Bell, refused, and MTV ended up airing the full video. Napier-Bell apparently found the negotiations with MTV much easier than those with the Chinese government.

This song hit #1 in the UK in October 1984. In America, the song wasn't released until August 1985, peaking at #3 that year after the video was released.