Celebrating 40 years of WHAM! Britain’s best loved and most popular duo, this is what the fans have been waiting for… WHAM! The Singles: Echoes From The Edge Of Heaven. This multi format release includes a special edition 7” vinyl singles carry case containing all the hits, which spanned four dazzlingly successful years, kicking off with 1982’s Young Guns (Go For It) and culminating in 1986’s The Edge Of Heaven. Along the way, there was some of the most uplifting music of any era: WHAM! RAP! (Enjoy What You Do), Bad Boys, Club Tropicana, Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go, Freedom, Last Christmas, Everything She Wants and I’m Your Man!
George Michael and Andrew Ridgeley formed WHAM! in 1981.The lifelong friends who met at secondary school in the small town of Bushey became one of the most globally successful pop acts of the 1980s, selling more than thirty million records worldwide. Several pop generations down the line, this treasure trove of musical gems continues to inspire legions of new fans!
George and Andrew released eleven singles as WHAM!, incredibly, five of them (Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go, Freedom, Last Christmas, I’m Your Man and The Edge Of Heaven) were British Number 1s. Meanwhile, in the United States, Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go, Careless Whisper and Everything She Wants were chart toppers: remarkably, all three were from the same album, Make It Big, which sold six million copies in America alone. Elsewhere, the boys topped the charts in a host of countries, including Australia, Canada, France, Holland, Italy, Ireland, South Africa and Switzerland!
In 1985, WHAM! became the first western group to perform in China, where two rapturously received concerts broke countless cultural barriers!
WHAM! toured the world. The Big Tour of 1984 and ‘85, comprised thirty-nine shows in support of the multi-platinum British and American Number One album – Make It Big. It took in the UK, Ireland, Japan, Australia, United States, Hong Kong and China and in the summer of 1985, their WHAMAMERICA! stadium tour played to hundreds of thousands of WHAM! fans the length and breadth of the USA.
On June 28, 1986, WHAM! The Final saw the duo depart in a blaze of glory in front of seventy-two thousand people at Wembley Stadium. The concert included performances by their friend Elton John!
Best of all, George and Andrew’s friendship was as strong at the end as it was in the beginning. WHAM! never got old and they never lost their exclamation mark!