George Michael’s Last Christmas: 2016 Claims Another Victim

Leona Laurie

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george michael
george michael
Image via GeorgeMichael.com

Like others, I have been shocked repeatedly this year by the artists who have passed away. However, I didn’t break down when I heard that David Bowie or Alan Rickman or Leonard Cohen died. For me, the one that hit that hard was George Michael, who reportedly passed peacefully today, Christmas day.*

I suppose there’s something poetic in his marking this day in this way, since Wham!’s “Last Christmas” is indisputably the best Christmas song of all time. But I would trade that poetic departure date for not having received the terrible news of his passing while eating Christmas dinner with my family and bursting into tears in front of everybody.

Rather than hash out his biography and embed tweets from celebrities sharing some of their grief publicly, I’ll give you a selection of the videos I want to watch and cry to right now, starting with a clip from the Key and Peele movie, Keanu, in which Keegan Michael Key‘s character convinces a minivan full of hardened drug dealers that George Michael is a true badass.

Next, the Wham! song that I laboriously memorized in my car a few years ago so I’d be ready to dazzle should anyone ever invite me to karaoke again, because George Michael is my go-to for hypothetical karaoke situations.

I have three George Michael songs ready in case someone invites me to karaoke. The second is “Careless Whisper,” but I’ve always worried that I’ll get too emotional while performing to sound any good. That will be more true now.

The last in my karaoke emergency bag: “Faith.”

https://youtu.be/lu3VTngm1F0

And because it’s Christmas, and I love him, and this is, as I said, indisputably the best Christmas song of all time: “Last Christmas.”

*The official statement says “over the Christmas period,” but Wikipedia lists December 25th as his date of death.

Leona Laurie

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