GEORGE MICHAEL VINYL RECORD WALL DISPLAY
With the news of George Michael’s limited edition box set of Older released on August 12th 2022, celebrating George’s 1996 iconic album, we wanted to pay tribute to this extraordinary music artist with a George Michael framed vinyl record display.
The beautiful box set contains a whole package of formats but of course it’s the LPs pressed on 180gsm vinyl for superior audio quality and, for the first time, ‘Upper’ on vinyl that gets our Fastlove!
We had a rummage through the Show & Listen vinyl archives and selected a few of our favourite classic LPs to create our own homage and celebration with a framed George Michael vinyl record and portrait display on the wall, whilst looking into the photographers behind the covers.
FAITH (1987)
Photographing George Michael for the sleeve of Faith was the job that launched Russell Young’s career and soon Russell was shooting musicians like Morrissey, Bjork, Springsteen, Dylan, REM, New Order, The Smiths, Diana Ross, Paul Newman and many other celebrities. Young is now an internationally acclaimed pop artist, creating larger than life silkscreen paintings of images from history and pop culture.
LISTEN WITHOUT PREJUDICE VOL. 1 (1990)
Listen Without Prejudice Vol. 1 is credited to graphic designer Simon Halfon, who also worked on the covers of Symphonica, Freedom 90 and Five Live EP.
The image came from a coffee table book – an anthology of 20th Century photography. Weegee’s 1940 image of an estimated million sunbathers appealed to George, to just let the incredible image speak for itself. Rolling Stone Magazine listed it as one of the LP covers of the year in 1991.
Halfon said, “Working with George on Listen Without Prejudice was a big moment for me. He was truly one of the good guys and a great friend. It’s still probably my personal favourite sleeve. Great record from a great artist.”
Halfon has also designed album covers for Oasis, The Who, Blue Note, Madness, Steve Winwood, David Bowie, among others and has released a book of his work https://nemperor.com/cover-to-cover
OLDER (1996)
The cover photography for Older was taken by Hollywood-born Brad Branson, whose previous collaboration with Dutch Artist, Fritz Kok under the name Industria, was responsible for album covers for Boy George, Marc Almond, Paul Rutherford and Robert Palmer. After going his own way, Brad was also responsible for Fast Love and Heal the Pain and was a behind the scenes photographer on George’s music videos for Freedom 90 and Too Funky.
“I think I composed the best, most healing piece of music that I’ve written in my life with this album … Older is my greatest moment,” George Michael.
In addition to the vinyl records in this one-off box set, you’ll also find three 12” x 12” art prints of George, that are as-if-made-for our record flipframes so there’s nothing stopping you from flipping open the frames and mixing it up with sleeve art and portraits* of the great man. Go to our SHOP to get your record frames.
*we sourced a few portraits that are not included in the box set!
Here’s the box set vinyl track lists – these fantastic records need to be shown and listened to!
TRACKLIST
OLDER VINYL
SIDE A
1. Jesus to a Child
2. Fastlove, Pt. 1
3. Older
SIDE B
4. Spinning the Wheel
5. It Doesn’t Really Matter
6. The Strangest Thing
SIDE C
7. To Be Forgiven
8. Move On
9. Star People
SIDE D
10. You Have Been Loved
11. Free
UPPER VINYL
SIDE A
1. Fastlove, Pt. 2
2. Spinning The Wheel (Forthright Edit)
3. Star People ‘97 (Radio Version)
SIDE B
4. The Strangest Thing ’97 (Radio Version)
5. You Know That I Want To
6. Safe
Full details here: https://www.georgemichael.com/news/article/#news-49135