George Michael Grammy Award Winning British Singer

George Michael is a two-time Grammy Award winning British singer-songwriter. George Michael is half of the duo Wham! and he has performed as a solo artist being successful in both acts over the years.

George Michael was born in North London on June 25th, 1963. Michael was born Georgios-Kyriacos Panayiotou to Kyriacos Panayiotou, a restaurateur and Lesley Angold Harrison a former dancer.

He spent the majority of his childhood in North London. In his early teens, the family moved to Radlett and Michael attended Bushey Meads School. George Michael later attended Kingsbury High School in 1974 for a short period. Michaels singing career started early with a ska band called The Executive. The band was short lived. His singing career started in a big way in 1981 with a duo band called Wham! with his best buddy Andrew Ridgeley.

Wham!s first album Fantastic! was released going to no.1 in the UK. Within a year they had released their first debut single, Wham Rap! (Enjoy What You Do?). Their second single, Young Guns (Go For It!), became the first in a string of Top 10 hits in the UK singles chart. Their second album Make It Big sold 6 million copies in the U.S. alone and made George Michael and Andrew Ridgeley international superstars. Singles from that album included Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go, Freedom, Last Christmas and Careless Whisper. Careless Whisper, written when Michael was seventeen, became one of the most played songs of the decade and Last Christmas has become an iconic Christmas song since then.

In 1984 George Michael sang for the band band Aid in their original recording of the song Do they know its Christmas. In 1985 he added background vocals to David Cassidy's 1985 hit The Last Kiss as well as Elton John's 1985 hits Nikita and Wrap Her Up. George Michael desired to create music targeted to a more sophisticated audience and this led him to his solo career, in early 1987. The song, I Knew You Were Waiting (For Me) helped Michael achieve this ambition and the song reached number one in both the UK Singles Chart and the Billboard Hot 100 upon its release.

His first solo album was Faith. I Want Your Sex was the first single released from the album and it was soon engulfed in controversy due to its nudity in video and suggestive lyrics. Many radio channels banned it but the song still reached # 2 in the U.S and #3 in U.K. Over the years George Michael released his albums Listen Without Prejudice Vol. I in 1990 and Vol. II in 1991.

George Michael later released his collections through two albums Ladies & Gentlemen: The Best of George Michael in 1998 and Twenty Five in 2006. His biography has been shown in Biography Channel on November 29, 2007. George plays a guardian angel to Jonny Lee Miller's character on ELI STONE, a new TV series that will soon debut in the U.S. Wikipedia