A List Of Things Thrown Five Minutes Ago

WELL, I GUESS IT WOULD BE NICE:  Twenty-five years later, Steven Hyden looks back at the release of George Michael's Faith, noting how it set the blueprint for transitioning from teen idol status to being taken seriously as an adult artist (hello, Timberlake!), and notes:

At a time when pop music brontosauruses stomped across the cultural plain, unencumbered by an Internet-ravaged music industry and supported by monolithic, star-obsessed media outlets, George Michael stood toe-to-toe with Michael Jackson, Prince, and Madonna, and by the late '80s was selling more records than all of them. But is that how we remember him? Faith was as much a part of the pop landscape as Thriller or Purple Rain, but it's not really put in that class anymore....

I've played Faith at least once a day for the past week to assess how it holds up in 2012. Not that I'm entirely convinced this is relevant, at least for those of us who were alive, young, and exposed to pop music in the spring and summer of 1988 (when Faith spent six of its 12 weeks at no. 1 on the Billboard albums chart) primarily via PA systems at neighborhood swimming pools and roller rinks. If this is you, then Faith is one of those albums that are just part of the geography of your life. I've owned Faith on cassette, vinyl, and CD, but it lives on forever in my head

Twenty million copies sold. Six top-five singles, four of them hitting number one. First album by a white solo artist to top the Billboard R&B chart. Grammy for Album of the Year. And then it all fell apart.