Last Christmas reference is, of course, cheesy, but I can't think of better way to remember a great musician than with his music.

Here's a nice article about an appearance of his and Morrissey's on an 80s tv show.

http://www.post-punk.com/morrissey-george-michael-talk-about...

He's spot on about Morely.

They ended his obit with the Beverly Hills bathroom incident. Way to stay classy BBC!

His music has been continuously played everywhere from shops to bars to events throughout the western world -- almost as a form of crowd control -- for almost two generations now. It will probably continue to be a staple of western audio-soma for at least another generation, and there is no denying his genius for it.

Not a good year for pop stars. Rest in peace.

Sadness! Careless Whisper is among my favorite songs!

I was going to make a snarky comment along the lines of "yeah, but when Leonard Cohen died earlier this year, a much more talented songwriter and musician, his obit didn't make the HN front page." Then I went and searched Leonard Cohen, and it did make the front page. Oops!

A lot of people will find out today that this icon of modern Britishness was, in fact, the son of an immigrant from an EU country. It's very apt, and extremely sad, that he died on the year of Brexit.

All the papers seem to have lost the bet on this one, there have been no prepared obits like with older musicians.

Doesn't really make much sense to prepare obits for people who aren't near the age of death, or otherwise aren't near death. The NYT prematurely prepared with Castro in 2006 -- who was thought to be near death -- and had to throw entire sections of their reporting out. [0] Most other newspapers, the Castro obit writers were no longer employed by 2016. It's basically journalism's version of cache invalidation, which is also one of journalism's hardest problems.

OTOH, I'm sure many news orgs have a Carrie Fischer obit prepared by now.

[0] http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/11/29/insider/fidel-...

We flag killed two stories about Carrie Fisher's heart attack yesterday. And today George Michael is an important story.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13247567

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13256198 and marked it off-topic.

I'm not sure why you're telling me. I haven't upvoted this story; I haven't tried to defend this submission.

Maybe people think George Michael is more significant than Carrie Fisher. He's certainly way, way, way more talented that's for sure.

Such a careless whisper.

Everything everyone has ever made will eventually be forgotten, Ozymandias style. But George Michael has been, for decades, far, far better known than most of the people, startups, etc., that are discussed on Hacker News. Which doesn't mean the latter oughtn't be discussed, but there's certainly no reason to refrain from discussing George Michael either.

What is so wrong with talking about the death of a beloved musician? (Did he kill your childhood pet or something?)

Wham! sold more than 25 million certified records worldwide from 1982 to 1986

Popularity is seldom a good indicator of quality. I mean, Avril Lavigne has sold twice that many records. Not that I'm saying George Michael wasn't any good; he was.

The point is, bringing those kinds of metrics into art is a slippery slope.

What is your measure of quality? I guess the point is that for millions he represented their view of quality, just because that does not meet the definition of other people's idea of quality does not make them wrong.

If you have ever noticed how pop music is used to subliminally "nudge"/suggest/control people, and if you realize just how accomplished he was at making that kind of music, you would know that what you have said is gravely mistaken.

That is true and that makes GM just another intelligence asset then (like the rest of the entertainment business).

Guessing from his public persona, he was probably oblivious to it.

The guy was a legend and a world class talent. On some of his big albums he wrote, produced and performed the music with multiple instruments. What is it you do that makes your commentary so worthwhile, besides demonstrating your ignorance?

Please don't respond to a bad comment by making the thread even worse.