George Michael Mini Biography

Georgios Kyriacos Panayiotou (born 25 June 1963), best known as George Michael, is a two-time Grammy Award winning, English[2] singer-songwriter, who has had a career as frontman of the duo Wham! as well as a soul-influenced, solo pop musician.

He has sold over 110 million records worldwide, encompassing 12 British #1 singles, 7 British #1 albums, 10 US #1 singles, and 2 US #1 albums. His 1987 debut solo album, Faith became one of the best selling albums of all time, as well as the first album to produce six top 5 singles in the United States.[citation needed] It has sold over 20 million copies worldwide.

All four of his solo studio albums have all reached #1 on the U.K. charts and have gone on to become huge international successes.

George Michael desired to create music targeted to a more sophisticated audience than the duo's primarily teenage fanbase. The first step of his solo career, in early 1987, was a duet with soul music icon Aretha Franklin. "I Knew You Were Waiting (For Me)" was a one-off project that helped Michael achieve an ambition by singing with one of his favorite artists, and it reached number one on both the UK Singles Chart and the Billboard Hot 100 upon its release.

For Michael, it became his third consecutive solo number-one in the UK from three releases, following 1984's "Careless Whisper" (though the single was actually from the Wham! album "Make It Big") and 1986's "A Different Corner". The single was also the first Michael had recorded as a solo artist which he had not written himself. The co-writer, Simon Climie, was an unknown at the time, although he would go on to have success as a performer with the band Climie Fisher in 1988. With this song, George won a Grammy Award in 1988 for Best R&B Performance - Duo or Group with Vocal.
Michael was initially private about being gay, with rumours of relationships with high-profile women such as Brooke Shields, and Melissa Megginson making him common tabloid fodder during his Wham! career.[citation needed]. Nonetheless, his sexual orientation was well known among the London music and style scene.
These persisted into his solo career, but Michael had already established a relationship with Anselmo Feleppa, whom he had met at the 1991 concert "Rock in Rio". Feleppa died of an AIDS-related brain hemorrhage in 1993. Michael's single "Jesus to a Child" is a tribute to Feleppa (he consistently dedicates it to him before performing it live), as is his 1996 album Older.

In a 2007 interview, Michael said that he kept his homosexuality secret due to worries over the effect it would have on his mother.