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George Michael / Freedom! 90 anniversary vinyl picture disc

georgemichael_freedom90

George Michael‘s 1990 single Freedom! ’90 will be reissued as a special limited edition twelve-inch picture disc at the end of November, for ‘Black Friday’.

The single was a big hit in the America at the time although like all of the 45s from Listen Without Prejudice, Vol 1 (with the exception of Praying For Time) it failed to breach the UK top 20, stalling at number 28.

Most formats in Britain – including the seven-inch, twelve-inch and cassette single – put the full length album version (6.30) on the A-side and the Soul II Soul sampling ‘Back To Reality Mix’ (6.12) on the B-side. Rather boringly, that is exactly what we get 25 years later on this new picture disc, although at the cover image looks to be a variation on the original.

Official edits of both versions of Freedom! ’90 were made for US Radio, propelling the single into the Hot 100 top ten (it peaked at number eight), although these were never released commercially.

georgemichael_free_cass
The author’s original UK cassette single of Freedom!

Although the song was dubbed Freedom 90 on the album (no exclamation mark and no apostrophe, grammar fans), for the single it was almost universally altered to just Freedom!, rather than Freedom! ’90. Just saying…

The single is well remembered for the super-model heavy video and this picture disc surely points the way towards an 25th anniversary edition of Listen Without Prejudice, Vol 1. If that does happen fans will hoping for an improvement on the 2011’s Faith deluxe editions which were really well presented, but offered little in the way of rare audio and nothing at all that was previously unreleased. What would you like to see on a LWP deluxe? Leave a comment below.

Freedom! ’90 twelve-inch picture disc is out on 27 November 2015. For some reason this is quite expensive on Amazon UK, so head to Amazon Italy or Amazon Canada for a big saving.

pre-order

track_listing

georgemichael_freedom902

Side A

Freedom! ’90 album version

Side B 

Freedom! ’90 (Back to Reality mix)

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[…] issued a Freedom! ’90 picture disc for Black Friday/RSD last year and George himself was fairly active in tweeting about #listen25, so an anniversary edition of his […]

Marko G.

OK, let’s say it’s numbered/limited, but without anything unreleased (or at least previously rare)? Does it really attract anyone to buy it? Just because it was made in limited edition? Come on, people, that’s exactly what the labels count on… I’d never buy anything because it’s on a different format if it doesn’t offer new content. Otherwise it would be like paying for the same content more than once. Makes no sense.

alex

Numbered ? Limited ? How many copies printed ??
thanks
ciao
Alex

Straker

Vinyl fetishism at it’s most ludicrous. Does Michael know, or even care, at the gouging perpetrated in his name?

Marko G.

Who in their right mind would shell out 22 pounds for this? And why? To have something that has already been released so long ago? Do people really go for plastic with no (new) content?

Stan Butler

No matter what tracks are on it, that is one of the most boring looking picture discs I have ever seen.

Piotr

This is UKP22 on Amazon UK. The previously announced release on SDE by Lush is a 5Cd box set which is UKP27 on Amazon UK. Take a wild guess how much work went into the two releases. Lush probably months of sifting through tape boxes and files while the former precisely no time whatsoever. It just doesn’t add up, does it?

Shane

Is there a list for Black Friday vinyls? Happy that amazon sells them to be honest!

bob

Actually I think you will find that is the only time that George ever sang one of his own songs at a ‘ charity type’ event. He refused to sing his own songs at Live Aid and the Mandella concert for eg. As he didn’t want to be seen as gaining from the cause.
He was I’ll advised to sing his new song at the Olympics but…..George’s career has hardly been on track recently.
Another year closes and still no new George Michael album. Such a waste.

baward

I’ve still not quite forgiven him for (uniquely among those performing) plugging his new single at the opening ceremony in of the 2012 Olympics! Or Bowie for resisting going at all, but that’s a whole other subject.

Megatof

I have no interest in a 12″ of Freedom 90…

Regarding a “Listen Without Prejudice, vol.1” box, one must realise there isn’t much b-side material to use…

– If You Were My Woman (live) (b/w “Praying for Time”)
– Freedom 90 (Back to Rality Mix)

Of course, if you wanna add everything between “Listen Without Prejudice, vol. 1” and “Older” then you’ll need a bigger box :D

– Tonight (live at Wembley, March 1991) [From “Two Rooms”]
– Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me (live at Wembley w/ Elton John, 25 March 1991)
– I Believe When I Fall in Love (live)

– Too Funky
– Too Funky (Extended Mix)
– Too Jazzy (Happy Mix)
– Too Funky (Digital Mix)
– Do You Really Want to Know
– Happy
– Crazyman Dance

– Somebody to Love (live at Wembley w/ Queen, 20 April 1992)
– Year of ’39 (live at Wembley w/ Queen, 20 April 1992) (at last!)
– These Are the Days of Our Lives (live at Wembley w/ Queen and Lisa Stansfield, 20 April 1992)

– Killer (live at Wembley)
– Papa Was a Rollin’ Stone (live at Wembley)
– Calling You (live at Wembley)
– Killer/Papa Was a Rollin’ Stone (PM Dawn Remix)

And if you please :

Ain’t No Stoppin’ Us Now (or anything else from the “Trojan Souls” demos),
You Spin Me Round (as “Infamy”)
Jive Talkin’ (w/ “Boogie Box High”)

The first box forgot the instrumental version of “Father Figure”, and anything not directly related to the album (any version of “I Knew You Were Waiting for Me” for exemple).

It would be cool this time to have more from live shows, or aborted projects. But I don’t think it will ever happen.

We might as well wait for a complete Wham! box, with every album, b-side, remixes, “Foreign Skies”, and “The Final” live show :))

Andreas

I always found it hard to believe that songs like ‘Too Funky’ were destined for LWP2, given that ‘Fantasy’ [an assumed teaser] was a funky/organic track that had a natural sound and feel that tied into LWP. Somehow the contemporary house influenced songs never seemed worthy of the LWP moniker, and would have been better off on another unrelated release (believe ‘extended play thing’ was an idea at the time – a mini dance album).

That aside, LWP does sound a bit flat, and producing an album of such depth may have been best handled with at least a co-production from someone in the know. Hopefully a remaster would go somewhere toward improving the sound dynamics/depth.

So, LWP remastered, and another CD entitled ‘Extended Pay Thing’, to incl the 5 commercially available dance tracks at the time, other tracks from the session floating around like ‘Disco’, and ‘Killer/Pappa’. Then there are the remixes (incl ‘Killer/Pappa’ PM Dawn remix), which should cap off the ‘Dance’ CD.

Naturally we would all love to have a good copy of the ‘Cove to Cover’ tour, and there were also a number of different tracks brought in during the different gigs. A DVD of this would be amazing and well over due.

It’s a shame – the official site did tease something to come, including a little ‘25’ trailer that played ‘killer/papa’, giving the impression of an up a coming all inclusive release. But like many George ideas, it sort of came and went.

The whole ‘Trojan Souls’ project had 3 or 4 more or less completed tracks, with some up-tempo instrumentals showing some good potential funk, but again, a real shame this wasn’t completed. Such a prolific time in George’s career, unfortunately not realised due to up and coming personal and legal issues. Hopefully he will pick up on some of these one day. A duets album of originals would be a good way to get back in the limelight.

doug

Yes, I am still shaking my head over the lack of the Father Figure Instrumental on the Faith deluxe.But -as noted by others-I Do have ‘Fantasy’. Hmm.

Straker

£22 for a pic disc – Pure comedy. No wonder they call the UK “Treasure Island”.

Does it come with a baggie of “herbal ciggies”?

darkroman

Whenever there is a George Michael release, it should be marked as a national holiday followed by at least three days of celebration :-) An anniversary edition of LWP would be exceptional. Maybe it could come with a Trojan Souls bonus disc – yet we all know that could and would never happen! As with Faith (other than the Monkey US remix 12inch), most of this era is already on CD, so it would be nice to see some promo edits compiled (all two of them), yet this era is very sparse indeed, even Fantasy was added to the Faith remaster when it came from this era! So I can only think that live tracks from the Cover To Cover tour could be added. Other than that, I think there isn’t anything to add. There isn’t even much video material other than the Praying For Time lyric video and the different edits for the LWP commercial. Time will tell… :-)

Gordon

Quick suggestions for ‘LWP V1 – SDE’:
*original album (obviously)
*the tracks intended for “LWP Vol 2” (if they still exist!) – at least 4 survived: “Too Funky”, Do You Really Want to Know”, “Happy” (all from the “Red Hot + Dance” compilation) and “Crazyman Dance” (b-side of “Too Funky”)
*DVD of the videos (including rare alternate edits)
…..and of course the usual suspects (remixes, single edits/mixes, promo edits/mixes, non-album b-sides, etc.)

I quite enjoyed the “Faith” deluxe edition – I never managed to get a copy of the album and singles when originally released so the ‘nothing new’ factor didn’t affect me. (Although I would have liked the audio and video recordings from the ‘Faith World Tour’ included)

My only minor grumble would be with the DVD picture quality – I had hoped for the bright *sparkle* of remastering. It looked like there had been a bit of ‘spit and polish’ but not to the level I was expecting.

But all in all I still enjoyed it – and seeing a very young Jonathan Ross gave me quite a giggle! Plus it was quality second hand so I was really happy about the bargain price ($AUD10 for the CD1/CD2/DVD edition)

Paul English