Some of the greatest mysteries in pop music history:
- What is the one thing Meat Loaf would not do for love? (If you read the lyrics carefully, there are lots of things.)
- Who was the “Bruce” that Electric Light Orchestra sang about in “Don’t Bring Me Down”? Bruce Springsteen? Bruce Lee? Robert the Bruce? (Actually, Jeff Lynne was singing “Groos,” a made-up word that he used as a placeholder. When fans started singing “Bruce,” he went with it.)
- Who was “You’re So Vain” written about? (No clue. I’ll guess “The Narcissist” Lex Luger just for a change of pace.
And, of course, there’s the big one — at least in relation to this post…
What, exactly, did Andrew Ridgeley do in Wham!?
As we’ve covered, musical duos are often rife with conflict — especially if there’s an unequal distribution of work.
When it came to Wham!, even calling it an “unequal” distribution seemed like a vast understatement.
George Michael wrote all of the band’s original songs by himself, other than three, which he co-wrote with Ridgeley (“Wham Rap,” “Club Tropicana” and “Careless Whisper”). He sang lead on all the songs. He did almost all of the production work. He even played keyboards and handled instrumental arrangements on some of the songs.
Meanwhile, Andrew… uh… He looked good in the videos and photoshoots (he was always the heartthrob in the group). He certainly played the guitar with gusto — never mind the fact that you could barely hear him on the records or in concert because the group relied more on synthesizers and electronic effects.
His main impact was behind the scenes where he served as George’s protector and support system. Confident and outgoing, Ridgeley got a lot of the press attention back then (his drunken antics and womanizing led tabloids to nickname him “Randy Andy”), allowing his shy and insecure bandmate (who happened to be struggling with his sexual identity during a time when being anything other than straight was taboo) to thrive away from the constant glare of the spotlight. According to James Gavin’s 2022 book George Michael: A Life, Ridgeley’s nature also came in handy when it came to aggressively approaching executives and radio personalities to promote the band’s records.
Perhaps a more charitable view of Ridgeley is that he handled the things that Michael didn’t want to or wasn’t comfortable with, freeing up George to focus on the creative stuff.
Not to say that Ridgeley wasn’t creative. In fact, he came up with the entire construct of the band, bringing the fashion and attitude while masterminding the group’s appearance and overall presentation. First, they were a couple of ne’er-do-wells content on living on the dole and doing whatever they wanted. Then they became a pair of eligible bachelors (a role Ridgeley certainly had no problem with) and bubblegum pop stars. Finally, they began evolving into a more mature outfit before Michael went solo and became a superstar.
In a band as manufactured and artificial as Wham!, there was no question that Ridgeley was playing a role the entire time — the band’s manager, Simon Napier-Bell, would later say that Wham! consisted of a “real Andrew” and a “fake Andrew.”
After the band broke up, Ridgeley spent four years racing cars and chasing film roles (and women). As 1990 began, he decided to resume his music career. Whether he genuinely had creative impulses he wanted to share or he had nothing else to do and needed to fulfill a contractual obligation, Ridgeley decided to go for it.
Uninspiring title aside (Albert really is his dad’s name), Son of Albert promised to finally show us the real Andrew. At least that’s what Ridgeley promised. Whereas Michael had always been influenced by soul music, Ridgeley loved rock ‘n’ roll. In his autobiography, Wham! George Michael and Me, Ridgeley recounted how he grew up listening to the likes of The Beatles and The Rolling Stones and especially loving Led Zeppelin. He even described meeting Jimmy Page at Live Aid as one of the biggest thrills of his life.
“I started writing in ‘86, so I was in the music pretty quick,” Ridgeley said in a 1990 interview on Countdown. “It’s just the album has taken a long time to write and compile. Quality does.”
If that’s the case, then I’d hate to see what would have happened if he had rushed things.
Let’s not sugarcoat this, Son of Albert is bad. Consisting almost entirely of up-tempo guitar-driven rock songs that sound like bad hair metal, Ridgeley’s generic riffs and melodies would have been fine had this album been released in the early 80s. By 1990, though, his sound was extremely dated, especially when compared to what Michael was doing on Faith and Listen Without Prejudice, the latter of which came out four months after Son of Albert. Even Warrant had better and more interesting songs than Ridgeley by then (and that includes “Cherry Pie”).
Lyrically, Ridgeley really leans into his “Randy Andy” persona. Take lead single “Shake,” which features him whining and kvetching about how he was going to make his woman regret not loving him. The album includes a “Hardcore Mix” of “Shake” that includes sex sounds and porno-style music.
Or “Mexico,” a Latino-infused rock song complete with Ridgeley singing some lines in Spanish that tells the exotic tale of Andy and his boys chasing after women in a foreign country. He even pays homage to “Take it Easy” by The Eagles. “Check this out, yes, oh my Lord/ There’s a girl cruising by in a flatbed Ford/ And she purrs and she sighs and I’m hound-dog dumb for her puss cat eyes.”
Or “The Price of Love,” in which Ridgeley warns about what happens when you “kiss one girl, kiss another, kiss them all but you won’t recover.”
Or “Kiss Me” in which he then contravenes that previous message by asking a hot blonde bikini babe to “kiss me, stroke me, pinch me, poke me, hold me, please me, taunt me, squeeze me, love me, use me, bite me, bruise me, prick me, tease me, come on and touch me.”
Man, a night with Andrew sounds exhausting. If we didn’t know better, we would be wondering if he was the one from Wham! that was trying a bit too hard to convince us he was a ladies’ man.
Or maybe there’s another, more obvious reason why he doubles, triples and even quadruples down on this style of music. Simply put, Ridgeley is not a good singer. He has a whiny, nasally delivery and his range is extremely limited, which means he can’t really sing outside middle register. Nor can he emote or convey any other emotion besides “let’s party and get horizontal,” which means ballads and emotional, introspective songs are out. If you ever wondered why George handled all of the vocals in Wham!, well, here’s your answer.
Speaking of George, he shows up to help his old friend on second single “Red Dress.”
George suggested contributing backing vocals after hearing a rough mix and liking what he heard. When he popped by to lend a hand, I was struggling with a vocal for the bridge. He jumped straight in and we nailed the part in short order, recording my lead before adding George’s backing vocals. He came down to the studio and took the reins, running the mixing desk like he owned the place. It was just like old times.
Andrew Ridgeley, Wham! George Michael and Me.
Despite Michael having the golden touch at that point in his career, he could not rescue his old partner. Whether it was his mediocre songwriting, limitations as a vocalist, and/or dated sound and production, Son of Albert was never going to be the kind of hit that made Andrew Ridgeley a minor star, let alone a superstar of George Michael’s magnitude. Worse, he was always going to suffer in comparison to Michael, who could do no wrong at that point. “George now had total command over his own recording process but, despite applying a little bit of that stardust to ‘Red Dress’, it didn’t help Son of Albert in the long run,” Ridgeley recounted in his autobiography.
Or in the short run. The album got savage reviews when it was released, with Entertainment Weekly calling it “fake-raunchy rock & roll” coming from Ridgeley’s “tiny voice” and Rolling Stone saying that “on the credibility scale, Andrew Ridgeley falls somewhere between LaToya Jackson and oblivion.”
Commercially, the results weren’t much better. While “Shake” hit #16 in Australia, that was an outlier. The single peaked at #58 in the U.K. and #77 in the U.S. “Red Dress,” meanwhile, went to #132 in the U.K. As for the album, it didn’t chart in the U.K. and reached #130 in the U.S. The lack of success caused the cancellation of his planned third single, “Mexico,” a move that delayed the Latino explosion in pop music until the end of the decade.
Okay, maybe not.
There’s one other possibility when it comes to Son of Andrew – the whole thing was an exercise in irony and not meant to be taken seriously. After all, it was the 90s and postmodern irony was starting to become en vogue (U2 pretty much turned it into an art form and set themselves up for the rest of the decade by doing it). While Ridgeley had given some interviews at the time where he had plainly stated that his goal was to make music that was “very macho, very raunchy” and “rooted in sexual energy,” he hedged a bit when talking to the Daily Mail, telling journalist Chrissy Iley that his songs were a satirical look at male sexuality. In later years, when interviewed about the album, Ridgeley stuck with that line, saying in a 1997 interview: “It was disappointing and depressing to receive quite such a beating over that album. The whole thing had been tongue-in-cheek, and it was misconstrued. But it was perhaps ill-conceived style-wise and in timing on my part.”
It’s certainly tempting to believe that this record is an over-the-top concept album about toxic masculinity – at least what we thought of it in 1990. Wham!’s stuff had been satirical, too, so this was not exactly new ground for Ridgeley.
Except those songs were crafted by a master writer and producer. These songs were not.
Additionally, he had cultivated the whole “Randy Andy” persona to the point where many people thought that’s who he actually was. So the album reads less as a satire and more as just him writing about what he knew and taking his persona to its logical extreme. And considering the critical and commercial failure of this record, it’s also natural to wonder if playing the irony card was just a defense and coping mechanism – the old “it wasn’t a success because people didn’t understand it” card instead of the fact that it was just a bad album.
Michael, for his part, always defended his friend, lamenting that there were four potential hit singles on Son of Albert and blaming Wham!’s baggage and stigma for Ridgeley’s failure. “He knows it’s not a great voice, but he fucking tries,” Michael was quoted as saying in Gavin’s book.
We’ll most likely never know if Ridgeley could have improved on his initial showing with some more experience and practice. Rather than work on his deficiencies as a singer and songwriter, Ridgeley decided to pack it in. He never released another recording and after making a cameo appearance with Michael at Rock N’ Rio in 1991, Ridgeley never performed on stage again. There were rumors of a reunion at Live 8, but they never came to fruition.
When Son of Albert was re-mastered and re-released in 2018, Ridgeley seemed baffled and bemused that the record was getting such treatment, “particularly in view of how poorly it performed the first time ‘round.”
He didn’t say much about it in his recent autobiography either. Keeping in tune with the title and overall theme of the book, most of the Son of Albert stuff concerns George’s role in “Red Dress.” In fact, Ridgeley spends more time talking about his Rio appearance, and Michael’s performance at the Queen Tribute Show the following year than he does about Son of Albert.
That focus has become even more pronounced in recent years, as Ridgeley has become Michael’s foremost advocate and memorialist. Whenever there’s a remembrance or retrospective of Michael or Wham!, you can bet Ridgeley will be there. He even inducted Michael into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and made a cameo in Last Christmas, a 2019 film that prominently featured Michael’s and Wham!’s greatest hits.
Perhaps it’s fitting that Ridgeley would still find comfort in being in George’s shadow and purpose in continuing to serve as his shield and protector. It was always his best role. Maybe he should have named his solo album Friend of George.
