Happy 37th anniversary to the third single from the album #faith … #fatherfigure The track starts with confession: “That’s all I wanted/Something special, something sacred.” In the hard-nosed rap songs popular in the late 1980s, this was known as “booty-begging” music.Father Figure was impure sensitivity – explicit without being raunchy: “For just one moment/To be bold and naked/At your side.”It’s forward – a verbalised pass – but the phrase “bold and naked” was also political. The cunning to express physical longing as a social imperative shows sophistication. In this song George, with this interpersonal communication, articulates the spiritual desire that is rarely admitted within gay discourse. It shows an ability to translate hidden, or once-forbidden, passion into widely relatable terms. In George -the-suitor’s drama of need and longing, he beseeches the object of his affection, auguring the crucial discussions, the self-examination and negotiations, that inhabitants of gay subculture had to hold among themselves (conversations that, of necessity, preceded the eventual popular understanding of the marriage equality topic.)Father Figure sets a human precedent more than it argues a social issue. What makes it an especially fine work of pop art is to be found when George’s chorus leaps to the song title’s great, almost taboo revelation: I will be your father figure (Oh baby)Put your tiny hand in mine (I’d love to)I will be your preacher teacher (Be your daddy)Anything you have in mind (It would make me)I will be your father figure (Very happy)I have had enough of crime (Please let me)I will be the one who loves you‘Til the end of timeLyrics that insinuate the complicity of intimates. The father-figure image alludes to the frankly sexual consent of role-playing partners as enjoyed between themselves. Each verse progresses in confidentiality, tenderness, affection.Put your tiny hand in mine” rings like a Sadean nursery rhyme. George was indeed a romantic pop star,through a music video that employed general-audience appeal by emulating a Hollywood melodrama,with b/w video co- directing with @andymorahan evoked Scorsese’s Taxi Driver 💜 | George Michael The Legend & our Idol - GM Fans