FREEEK

George Michael

Strangely enough, there are some things you should never do. For example, painting out the letter N in the THIS IS ANFIELD sign at Liverpool’s home ground is not recommended (not if you want to leave the city in one piece). Something else that you should never do is write off George Michael, whether you like him or not. Classing myself as one of his biggest fans certainly isn’t something I usually do, but to be fair this isn’t bad. It’s not a massive step forward, but it’s dark, moody, goes along at a steady pace and the title’s badly mis-spelt, not to mention that an upbeat George Michael is much more inventive than a balladeering George Michael. It’s also better than

GOODNIGHT LOVERS

Depeche Mode

How the mighty fall. Back when Exciter came out, I expressed a certain amount of disappointment with it and found it difficult to comprehend how the same man who wrote Somebody (the greatest love song ever written) could have written Goodnight Lovers. Here’s my problem with it. It’s terrible. Coming from someone who believes that Depeche Mode are the finest band in existence, that’s not easy to say. Unfortunately, lyrically and musically it fails (“Here, somewhere in the heart of me / there is still a part of me that cares” just doesn’t hit home like “Someone who’ll help me see things in a different light / All the things I detest I will almost like”) as anything approaching real life is ditched in favour of bagfuls of sentiment. Why The Dead Of Night or I Am You weren’t singles instead of this I’ll never know, but when even the fact that David Gahan sings the song beautifully can’t save the song, we have a problem. Even Freelove was better.