Today in The Music of New Coke, Wham’s “Everything She Wants” from their multi-platinum album, Make It Big.  “Everything She Wants” scolding lyrics for a backbreaking, gold digging wife hit a nerve with the New Coke public and the single spent two weeks at number one during the spring of 1985.

Wham — minus the exclamation point in their name because the idea of possibly using possessive punctuation makes my head spin and since some of my friends are editors and English professors I know I would screw up the usage in front of them, much like I did these dashes — was one of the biggest bands I can recall listening to in the fourth grade.  Sleepovers were spent playing this record and pretending all twenty of us were in the band, which considering the video, wasn’t that far off.  Debates over Andrew Ridegley versus George Michael regularly took place on the bus to school.  Small gold crosses, also favored by Madonna, started showing up on gold hoop earrings. 

I recall knowing that Boy George didn’t like George Michael and that there was lots of gossip around him attempting to deflower Brooke Shields, (why Shields’ mother is never mentioned when discussing stage mothers is beyond me), and when people said he might be gay it did not seem too off to me because I knew Elton John was gay and my parents liked Elton John and he seemed okay, so gay was okay too.

It wasn’t until years later that I would find out that the reason why Boy George didn’t like George Michael was because Michael publicly denied being gay.  I still have yet to receive an adequate explanation for Brooke Shields. She cannot blame their dating on New Coke, that’s for sure.