What makes a great pop song?
George: A great pop song has something about it that will appeal to millions of people. There are different ways of doing that. You can do it in a crass way like ‘Agadoo’. Or in
Andrew: It should be some form of emotion in extreme. I’ll tell you why I think ‘Two Tribes’ is so good. You get incredible energy, excitement and that really say synthesizer bit in the middle. Two absolute extremes.
George: I like to have a line or two that
But couching the specific in the universal is what pop does best, and Michael was a master of the form. (And a staunch defender of it: “How can you not realise the elation of a good pop record is an art form?” he demanded in Rolling Stone in 1988.) In comparison to other pop icons who died this year, Michael had a small recorded output; he released six studio albums, the last of which came out in 2004, and a smattering of live compilations and one-off singles. The albums, from Faith on, are stuffed with ideas and passion, driven by his surgical approach to writing and arranging songs for maximum effect. His live recordings further reveal his deep respect for pop as a form and as an ideology; his covers paid tribute to his elders – Stevie Wonder, Queen, the Doobie Brothers – with verve and revealed how he kept up with his contemporaries, taking on the work of Terence Trent D’Arby and Seal while also taking detailed notes on how