George Michael on His Process of Composing Songs

What do you use to compose on?

I compose in my head usually. I used to compose that way because I didn’t have a tape machine. I wrote all the melody lines to ‘Careless Whisper’ just sitting on a bus. I always write things in my head, let them go around in my head, then I forget about them. Later I come back to them and if the ideas are still there I know that they are commercial and that I like them. When I first got a record contract I bought all the equipment that I thought I should use, but when I looked back later at ‘Fantastic’ I realised that all the best tracks were the ones that I had made up in my head, so I went back to that for the new album. I would hum the melody lines and the bass lines to myself again and again and then once they were cemented in my mind and I knew them off by heart I would go down to the studio with the musicians, get them to play the songs on the keyboards or the bass, telling them the feel that I wanted, and then I’d fill it all in after that.

SOURCE: George Michael on His Songwriting (No. 1 Magazine, 1985)

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