By now, George Michael's battles with the music industry & his bid to be taken seriously as an artist are a part of modern pop music legend. Sure, his solo albums have been years in the making, only this time, it wasn't legal reasons that kept him from returning to the stores, but mostly personal ones & just plain perfectionism. So is PATIENCE the best album to make a comeback? Not really, but it'll do just fine.1. "Patience"---This brief ballad opens the album with lyrics that appear to be about both the importance of religion & why it is never there when we need it. George shows how far he has grown vocally in the last 2 decades. The reprise of the song that closes the British version of PATIENCE was left off of America's one probably for the sake of redundancy.
2. "Amazing"---The first single in America, a better one could not have been chosen, for it shows that George still knows his way around a groove. A #1 hit on the Billboard Dance charts, perhaps America has forgiven George his past indiscretions, not all of them musical.
3. "John & Elvis Are Dead"---Continuing the religious-of-sorts nature of "Patience", George makes perfect sense when he asks, "If Jesus Christ is alive & well, then how come John & Elvis are dead". Maybe George had asked the same question of some of the other people close to him who passed on while this album was being recorded.
4. "Cars & Trains"---A song about how the alluring nature of love will make us do the strangest things, it nevertheless is one of the album's least-engaging tracks. The music is somewhat catchy, but doesn't linger long in the mind after it's finished. If George had gone all perfectionist, he could have paid to flesh this song out some more.
5. "Round Here"---For those who've liked George's ballads since "Father Figure" or even "Careless Whisper", this song reigns supreme. Apparently about his childhood, George again works magic with his voice, showing that maybe with age, it's begun to work better on slower tunes than dance numbers.
6. "My Mother Had A Brother"---No doubt the emotional height of the album, this has to be closest to George's heart. About his uncle who committed suicide on the day George was born because he couldn't cope with his homosexuality, for someone with his own issues in that respect, maybe I'm lucky not to have been faced with that kind of choice George's uncle had.
7. "Flawless [Go To The City]"---Returning to the infectious delights of "Amazing", it certainly has the highest amount of beats per minute, and it's no wonder this is being considered for the second single. The "Flawless" part comes from the Ones song of the same name being sampled, so really the song's title is "Go To The City".
8. "American Angel"---Singing the praises of his current partner (the most heartfelt tribute to a lover from Texas since Roxy Music's "Prairie Rose"), George again shows his mastery of the slow jam with music you can easily imagine on a soft rock radio station.
9. "Precious Box"---The epic of the album at 7 1/2 minutes, the stream-of-consciousness approach to lyrics may put some off. However, the beat of this song is its saving grace, and it's easy to picture club patrons everywhere getting their groove on to this one.
10. "Please Send Me Someone [Anselmo's Song]"---George pays tribute to his first lover whose passing had inspired most of the songs on 1996's OLDER. Only this time, George is rather thankful for having been sent someone like his late boyfriend in his current one, thus contributing to the song's more upbeat, yet still ballad-driven, air.
11. "Freeek! '04"---This had been released in England nearly 2 years before PATIENCE finally came out, and maybe the perfectionist in George encouraged him to update it. By far his most salacious musical come-on since "I Want Your Sex", I wonder if George was listening to Nine Inch Nails' "Closer" while working on this song for "Freeek!"'s beat is identical to it, along with the lyrics' praising of the more sexual side of love.
12. "Through"---The American version of the album closes out with this somber ballad that is said to be the tell-tale sign of George's wishes to get away from the music business. Only a decade & a half ago, George was decrying the tabloid media with one of his hottest ever dance beats on "Freedom '90". But now he's not willing to dance his troubles away even if he remains just as disgusted with a medium that really hasn't changed in the years since, just gotten even more vicious.
The second single that came out in England before the album's release was the controversial "Shoot The Dog", which skewered Bush-era politics & the cozy little niche Tony Blair has carved into W.'s circle. Left off the American version because this is an election year (which I can understand with the whole equal time issue), I have to be honest that this song isn't all it's cracked up to be. Perhaps I need to listen to it a few more times, but the inflammatory nature of the song is lost on me at the moment.
Sure, PATIENCE may be George Michael's last album, but given the amount of years that he has put between his albums, I tend to think that George will just begin to take his time with subsequent records. Besides, very few artists who have "retired" ever stuck to that promise. So maybe George wants to spend quality time with his partner, and put music in the back of his mind for awhile. That is just fine, but let's hope PATIENCE is not really the last we hear of him. If anything, maybe he's just telling us to be even more patient with him while he works on the next album.
