Georgios Kyriacos Panayiotou, born June 25, 1963 in Bushey, England, best known as George Michael, is a two-time Grammy Award winning, English 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 100 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, and also the first album to produce six top 5 singles in the United States and 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. This success has made George Michael the most played artist on British radio over the past two decades.
George Michael (born Georgios Kyriacos Panayiotou on June 25, 1963 in East Finchley, London, England) is an English pop musician of Greek Cypriot ancestry. Michael began his career by forming a band called The Executive together with his best friend Andrew Ridgeley, a fellow pupil at Bushey Meads School, though it did not survive for long.
It wasn't until he formed the duo Wham! together again with Ridgeley in 1981 that the success came for the band. Their first album, Fantastic!, was an instant success, and within a year they had released their classic debut single, Wham Rap! (Enjoy What You Do), while their second single, Young Guns (Go For It), became the first in a string of Top 10 hits in the UK singles chart. They were rapidly followed by titles such as Bad Boys, Club Tropicana, Wake Me Up Before You Go Go, Freedom, Last Christmas/Everything She Wants, I'm Your Man and a second album, Make It Big. George also sang on the original Band Aid recording of Do They Know It's Christmas and donated the profits from Last Christmas/Everything She Wants to the charity.
With the success of his solo releases Careless Whisper (1984) and A Different Corner (1986) stories of an impending Wham! split intensified, and Wham! duly separated in the summer of 1986 after a farewell single, The Edge Of Heaven and album, plus a sell-out concert at Wembley Stadium.
Some of his biggest hit singles as a solo artist include the single "Faith" (taken from his debut album Faith that not only became number one on both sides of the Atlantic but also resulted in stunning four number one singles in America) and many more.
"Careless Whisper" (written when he was seventeen) became one of the most played songs of the decade and voted Londoner's Favourite record of all time in January 1995 in a competition run jointly by the capital's leading evening newspaper and radio station. He was then also voted Best Male Singer by the same radio station and by the readers of a national newspaper. Some of his other hits include "Father Figure", "One More Try", "Freedom 90", "Fastlove", "Jesus To a Child", "Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me" (a duet with Elton John), 2002's "Freeek!" and "Shoot the Dog".
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From Wikipedia:George Michael, born as Georgios Kyriacos Panayiotou (Greek: ???????? ???????? ??????????; 25 June 1963), is an English singer-songwriter who rose to fame in the 1980s, when he formed the pop duo Wham! along with his school friend Andrew Ridgeley. His first solo single, "Careless Whisper" was released when he was still in the duo and sold about six million copies worldwide.
As a solo artist, he has sold over 100 million records worldwide as of 2010, encompassing 7 British #1 singles, 7 British #1 albums, 8 US #1 singles, and 1 US #1 album. His 1987 debut solo album, Faith has sold over 20 million copies worldwide and made several records and achievements in the United States. In 2004, Radio Academy named Michael as the most played artist on British radio between the period of 1984?2004.
The documentary A Different Story was released in 2005, it covered his personal life and professional career. In 2006, George Michael announced his first tour in 15 years. 25 Live tour was a massive, worldwide undertaking by Michael that spanned three individual tours over the course of three years (2006, 2007, and 2008).