Album dossier / 1987

Faith

George Michael · Pop/R&B

George Michael's proper solo debut was mostly cut at the remote Puk Studios in rural Denmark with longtime engineer Chris Porter, who recalled that the title track's stark acoustic-guitar sound was an accident: the only guitar on hand was a battered aluminum-body instrument left behind by the British punk band the Damned, and by the time a replacement arrived the take was already finished, so Michael kept it as the song's signature texture. Sessions moved to Sarm West in London after Michael developed cabin fever at the isolated Danish studio; there the squelching synth hook on "I Want Your Sex" emerged from engineers experimentally chaining sequencers together, a "happy accident" Porter later described in interviews. Written, arranged and produced almost entirely by Michael himself, Faith spun off four US #1 singles and became the best-selling album of 1988 worldwide, formally completing his transition from Wham! teen-pop to serious R&B-inflected solo artist.