This affecting exploration of the troubled genius\u2019s impact is packed with anecdote, sharp analysis and social context<\/p>\n
In 1998, George Michael was arrested for public lewdness in an LA lavatory, an incident that finally led the singer to publicly come out. The following day, Sathnam Sanghera found himself unable to leave his room at university: the doorway had been mockingly plastered with tabloid newspaper headlines \u2013 \u201cZIP ME UP BEFORE YOU GO-GO!\u201d \u2013 by fellow students aware of his longstanding fandom. As a writer, Sanghera is best known for a series of award-winning books on the British empire, which he calls his \u201cspecialist subject\u201d. Judging by Tonight the Music Seems So Loud \u2013 not a biography so much as a miscellany, a set of themed essays that tend to digress in all kinds of intriguing directions \u2013 the life and work of one Georgios Panayiotou runs imperialism and its legacy a very close second.<\/p>\n
It is an unashamedly partisan book, although not an uncritical one. Sanghera is as alive to Michael\u2019s personal and professional failings (whether the naffness\u00a0of some of his early work as one half of Wham! or his high-handed treatment of the duo\u2019s other half, Andrew Ridgeley) as he is in love with his artistic triumphs. These, of course, range from Careless Whisper and Wham!\u2019s annually inescapable Last Christmas to the 1996 solo masterpiece Older, a peculiar and peculiarly effective cocktail of raw grief at the Aids-related death of his lover Anselmo Feleppa and unrepentant horniness.<\/p>\n
![](\"https:\/\/i.guim.co.uk\/img\/media\/ff84b45168794772be5b11db00a52e9013d46b08\/150_3_3283_2627\/master\/3283.jpg?width=140&quality=85&auto=format&fit=max&s=b185e763bd68612054113345c092dbc7\" "\\"Tonight")
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