Billboard’s Greatest Pop Star of 1988: George Michael

(In 2018, the Billboard staff released a list project of its choices for the Greatest Pop Star of every year, going back to 1981. Read our entry below on why George Michael was our Greatest Pop Star of 1988 — with our ’88 Honorable Mention runner-ups, Rookie of the Year and Comeback of the Year pop stars at the bottom — and find the rest of our picks for every year up to present day here.)

MTV was no longer a novelty in 1988: It was the engine driving the music industry, shaping the Billboard charts and molding the very image of a pop star. George Michael realized the depth of this change more than his peers. Music videos were crucial to his rise to stardom in the mid-’80s as part of the hitmaking duo Wham!, but those singles deliberately targeted teenyboppers, underscoring the idea that MTV was for kids. Michael abandoned such notions when he went solo in 1987 — deciding to refashion his persona so it was sexy, mature, even dangerous.

Of course, this was a strategic pose, as all pop music is to an extent. Michael embraced how image and music are inseparable, consciously crafting Faith — his ‘87 solo debut LP, which ruled the charts throughout 1988 thanks to four No. 1 singles — so the videos enhanced the music, and vice versa. 

All through 1988, it was impossible to escape images of George Michael bopping to a rockabilly guitar in his tight jeans, brooding with a broken heart or seducing comely models in “Father Figure.” These looks were tailored for the times, while reflecting the times: They were stylish, moneyed fantasias, where the sex was as intoxicating as the wealth. It never seemed that Michael was one with the audience — he stood separate, an object of admiration and desire, a pop star who never made a wrong move.

This attention to detail, apparent in his image as well as his music, served as a testament of how Michael was raised in the hothouse of Britain’s pop music industry, which was dominated by gossipy music newsweeklies and video clips that easily translated to MTV. Michael’s brilliant move with Faith was to finesse and polish this glitz so it seemed heartfelt, not glib. Similarly, Michael’s music was seamless, streamlined so every element helped emphasize its pop aspects. Compare “Faith” to “Desire,” U2’s contemporaneous bid for American roots credibility: Both bounce to a Bo Diddley beat, but Michael isn’t interested in po-faced rock authenticity. Pop is his passion. 

In a 1988 cover feature for Rolling Stone, Michael enthused: “If you listen to a Supremes record or a Beatles record, which were made in the days when pop was accepted as an art of sorts, how can you not realize that the elation of a good pop record is an art form? Somewhere along the way, pop lost all its respect. And I think I kind of stubbornly stick up for all of that.” 

This notion has become commonplace in the last decade, but in 1988, such poptism seemed radical, even if it was the logical conclusion of a culture that embraced big, stylized pop stars over earthy troubadours. Many musicians mimicked Michael — take a quick gander at Donny Osmond, who adopted every move of Faith for his eponymous 1989 comeback and its hit “Soldier of Love” — but more importantly, this complete fusion of music and image became the gold standard for pop stars of all stripes in the decades to come. 

Michael would later make plenty of mistakes, abdicating his throne nearly as quickly as he earned it. By 1990, he seemed bored with the whole game, forcing his audience and critics — and, as somebody raised on British music weeklies, he was obsessed with critics — to pay attention to nothing but his music by removing himself from all his imagery; he wasn’t seen on the album cover or in the videos for Listen Without Prejudice, Vol. 1. But during the Faith album cycle, he revelled in his own creation — of George Michael the pop star.

Honorable Mention: Def Leppard (“Pour Some Sugar on Me,” “Love Bites,” “Armageddon It”), Rick Astley (“Never Gonna Give You Up,” “Together Forever”,” “She Wants to Dance with Me”), Michael Jackson (“Man in the Mirror,” “Dirty Diana,” “Smooth Criminal”)

Rookie of the Year: Guns N’ Roses

Guns N’ Roses are often seen as the paragons of real, dangerous rock & roll — yet part of their appeal lay in the unspoken cartoonishness of their presentation. Not since the Ramones were a rock ‘n’ roll band so suited for caricature, which is one of the reasons they thrived in the era of MTV; they looked best when painted in broad strokes. That much was evident when “Welcome to the Jungle” first hooked metalheads in late 1987, but word of mouth spilled over into the mainstream in the summer of ‘88, culminating with the ballad “Sweet Child O Mine” topping the Hot 100 that September. Its success helped “Paradise City” hit top five in early 1989, a shocking placement for a song so hedonistic — proof that the group were now pop stars. 

Comeback of the Year: George Harrison

Prior to “Got My Mind Set On You,” the single that sat at the top of the charts at the outset of 1988, George Harrison had been a commercial nonentity since at least 1981. In fact, “Mind” was his first No. 1 since 1973, a stat that indicates the unlikelihood of Harrison’s comeback — but not his larger impact. At at time when his fellow boomers were struggling to get new material heard, Harrison breezed back into heavy rotation with a blend of pep and unabashed nostalgia, qualities evident both in mind and the rose-tinted “When We Was Fab,” his other top 40 hit (and MTV fixture) of ’88. It helped that his producer Jeff Lynne crafted a glistening modern production for parent album Cloud Nine, a sound that would rule pop and rock radio for years to come — including on the multi-Platinum debut set of his supergroup the Traveling Wilburys that year, in which Harrison was also a cheery participant. 

(Read on to our Greatest Pop Star of 1989 here, or head back to the full list here.)