To feel sorry for George Michael that he felt unable to be honest about his sexuality for so long?

[girlfriend44]

Just been watching Wham in China. It seems such a shame that George felt he had to hide his sexuality from his parents and the media for so long.

Wham were really great fun weren't they?
Last Christmas still makes so much money from Royalties.

Anyone want to discuss Wham? Were they part of your youth?

That wasn’t the case. He was actually advised not to come out because his main market were young girls and his advisers were worried it would have impacted sales if it came out that he wasn’t a rampant heterosexual after all.

Thankfully we now live in more enlightened times but thats what it was like in the 80s most people were not openly gay even if it was obvious.

We all knew he was gay so there was little point in him hiding it.

This, it was all marketing which was a shame, 13 year old me would have still loved him.it wouldn't have mattered! Teenage girls would cope if a band member was gay.

Not to mention the tabloid-fed common assumption that gay = AIDS back then, which made record companies even more fearful about their ££.

I honestly didn't though, although looking back god knows how I didn't see it. But yes, it's a shame he had to hide his sexuality but like a PP said, his fan base was predominately young girls so could have had an effect on their popularity.

I didn’t know. And it turned out I was gay too. Clueless. I loved him though, beautiful voice.

We love George in our house. And my over-riding impression of him has always been simply that he seemed like an absolutely lovely, kind man.

Did we ? I didnt .

Different times definitely. In the 80’s I had a work colleague who use to phone his partner Sam. It wasn’t until I got to know him better as a friend and actually met Sam that I realised he wasn’t Samantha as we’d all assumed ! This was in London in Aids times, being openly gay was considerably less prevalent than it is now.

Did u know Barry Manilow was and Elton John before they came out?

His partner died of Aids. They hadn't been together long.

Different times. It was illegal for men to engage in homosexual acts before 1967 and the age of consent for homosexual men was only lowered from 21 to 18 in 1994. George was born in 1963, so by the time he was a teenager, it had only been legal to have sex with another man for less than 10 years.

I am in my late 50s, so was a teenager during the Wham years and tbh, I didn't really know what being "gay" meant until I was in sixth form, let alone that Freddie Mercury, George Michael, Elton etc were gay men. When I was at school, if boys thought another boy was "gay", they'd bully them mentally and physically. AIDS in the 80s was massive and terrified everyone into thinking that if they so much as looked at a gay person, they'd die.

I'm fairly sure that even bands with singers who could have been described as more overtly gay, like Jimmy Sommerville, Marc Almond, Andy Bell etc didn't openly talk about being gay in the early to mid 80s - although I'd happily be corrected, if I am remembering that wrongly.

Thank goodness times have changed.

Love George Michael. I remember the freddie mercury memorial concert thought he would come out then. In the docc wham In Their Own Words andrew said they were all scared of his dad, which makes sense.

I don't generally go in for celebrity-worship but I absolutely adore George Michael. Even though most of his music was before my time.

Absolutely love how he handled the cruising "scandal". Iconic.

I had no idea at all that George was gay as a kid in the 80s. It wouldn’t have made a jot of difference to me, though. I adored him!

I think (just from bits I have watched and read in later years) that the ‘truth’ was complicated - a mix of him fearing the homophobia around in those times, not wanting to ‘disappoint’ his parents and his record label wanting to keep him in boyband pin-up territory for teen girls, which being an openly gay man may have threatened (although as I said, I wouldn’t have given a damn).

They werec alot older
I was a child / young teen when Wham were famous and probably quite naieve.

He capitalised on his gayness in the latter part of his career though. So it wasn't like he was closeted the whole time. I remember being shocked the other fella in wham wasn't also gay!

I’m not sure how different the times are, quite a few noughties boy bands have later had a member come out when they couldn’t while in the band. Mark Feehily westlife, Stephen Gately Boyzone, Duncan James Blue as recently as 2014. Now I’ve written it down I appreciate these are still a long time ago but a lot more recent than George Michael . However liberal the music industry is , it also still likes to closet people if it’ll mean more sales and money.

I’m of the same generation as GM.

things were very different back then. Yes there were some people like Bronski Beat/Communards who were very out and proud but at the same time HIV/AIDS made homophobia rife.

that and as a pp said, Wham were definitely marketed at teenage girls. He was a victim of his time unfortunately.

I didn't although looking at the skimpy shorts in Wake Me Up Before you go go, it wasn't that surprising.

So many men had to hide their sexuality back in the day - lots of film stars marrying women etc.
As a PP said, being gay in the 80s was automatically linked with the fear of AIDS.

Barry manilow is gay?

I had no idea he was gay - but I was a pretty naive teenager! I was 15 when Last Christmas/everything she wants was in the charts… I remember my friends and I saying, ‘Ooh isn’t his hair lovely? Looking back at it now: SO gay!

I can’t remember what programme it was, but I definitely saw something about him – after he died – where Shirley Kemp was saying that he had wanted to come out, and she and Andrew Ridgeley talked him out of it. Said it would be career suicide (for them too, I guess)

People generally seemed to be very happy to be out and proud before the nineties in some areas. I remember friends of my parents wearing wedding rings and using the term husband for male partners (even though gay marriage wasn't legal) without anyone having a problem, and lots of the adults going to gay clubs with friends, even if they weren't gay. Where he lived, might have been different of course.

But haven't heterosexual stars been made to hide girlfriends by their management? Because they want their fans to believe they could date them?

Re tabloids headlines
Gay plague
And other assorted niceties .
No wonder people didn't let on easily.