Speaking ahead of Netflix's Wham! documentary, co-founding member Andrew Ridgeley told NME about the joy he's felt revisiting his band's heyday.
"The nice thing about Wham! is that it was almost exclusively a joyful and positive period in both our lives. It had a beginning, middle, and an end – so it makes a great story," he said.
But what about after Wham's end? What happened to Andrew Ridgeley next?
What happened to Andrew Ridgeley after Wham!?
At the age of 18, school friends Andrew Ridgeley and George Michael joined together to form Wham!. There were some bumps initially, but it wasn't long until the duo took over pop's entire landscape with a string of number one singles, 30 million record sales worldwide, and even a historic visit to China in 1985 as part of the group's world tour.
But by 1986, George's decision to go solo ended the band and with that, Wham! bowed out with one last concert at Wembley. The tabloids were predictably cruel after that, claiming that Ridgeley was the weak link who didn't really contribute anything of value to the band's sound.
Netflix's new documentary goes out of its way to prove that's not the case, although it does concede that George was the driving force behind Wham! in many ways. What the film doesn't explore though is how Ridgeley briefly continued to make new music in the aftermath of Wham!'s demise.
In 1990, Ridgeley fulfilled his contractual obligation with CBS Records by releasing a solo album named Son of Albert. The first single, 'Shake', reached #81 in Australia and failed to chart in most other countries. A follow-up single called 'Red Dress' performed even worse.
In hindsight, the music wasn't actually too bad for the time, but critics weren't kind to Ridgeley's solo efforts. Perhaps people were disappointed that Andrew had taken a guitar-driven route that veered wildly from Wham!, or maybe his work suffered from too many inevitable comparisons to George's huge success at the time. Whatever the case, Ridgeley never released another album of solo material again.
On January 27, 1991, Ridgeley briefly reunited with Michael on stage at the encore of his Rock in Rio event at the Maracanã Stadium in Rio de Janeiro. However, this reunion was short-lived.
Looking back, Andrew told The Big Issue that he "had no real idea" what to do next.
"I didn't have any real ambitions to do anything else in music," he said. "I didn't have any artistic destiny like Yog. I had a girlfriend and we had a really rather nice couple of years in LA."
In those years, Ridgeley briefly pursued a career in acting.
"I was offered a few film roles and I went to an acting coach," Andrew recalled. "It was immediately apparent to me that it was not something that I wanted to do.
"The chap said to me, 'Imagine your mother's died'. I think he was trying to get me to cry but I thought, why the f**k would anyone want to imagine that?"
In those early post-Wham! years, Andrew also tried his hand at Formula Three racing around Europe. While motorsport didn't work out for him, his team owner Dave Price remembers him fondly.
"What I remember about first meeting Andrew was that he was just so normal really, a chilled guy who obviously had a tonne of money to do what he wanted with, and luckily for us he wanted to go motor-racing," Price told The Race.
"It was a bit of fun for him really and he seemed to enjoy it, because I think it suited where his life was just after Wham! had stopped. Looking back I don't think he was under illusions that he was going on to make a career from it to the best of my knowledge.
"He was much more successful at being a pop star than a racing driver but at least he had a go."
From around the early '90s onwards, Ridgeley mostly avoided the spotlight he had grown accustomed to, aside from occasional appearances on TV and radio. Royalties for Wham! songs like "Careless Whisper" and "Last Christmas" most likely helped keep him in comfort during those years.
It was around this time that Ridgeley moved back to England where he bought a medieval cottage in Wadebridge, Cornwall together with his girlfriend at the time, Keren Woodward (from Bananarama). The pair went on to live there together for many years.
In 2002, the English indie rock group Black Box Recorder released a single called 'Andrew Ridgeley' which suggested that the less successful member of Wham! deserved more credit than he ever received.
In 2005, Ridgeley broke his silence on Wham! and gave his first on-camera interview since the band's split almost 20 years earlier. His words were featured in a TV documentary named A Different Story which explored the life of George Michael.
That same year, Ridgeley and Michael supposedly planned to reunite as Wham! for Live 8, but reports suggested that Andrew pulled out at the last minute. In 2012, rumours began to circulate of another reunion to mark the 30th anniversary of Wham!'s first album, but nothing materialised and Michael denied the speculation.
Following Michael's death in December 2016, Ridgeley – joined by Pepsi and Shirlie, who had been Wham! backing vocalists – gave an emotional tribute to his friend and bandmate at the 2017 Brit Awards.
"On Christmas Day 2016, the greatest singer-songwriter of his generation, an icon of his era – and my beloved friend – George Michael was lost," he said.
"A supernova in a ferment of shining stars has been extinguished and it felt like the sky had fallen in. We larked around and laughed a lot. We were the best of friends.
"George has left for us in his songs, in the transcendental beauty of his voice, and poetic expression of his soul, the very best of himself. I loved him and in return, we, you, have been loved."
In 2018, Ridgeley appeared on Good Morning Britain to discuss a charity race through the French and Swiss Alps called Dallaglio Cycle Slam. Presenter Piers Morgan pressed Ridgeley on Michael's death which had taken place just two years earlier, but he was clearly uncomfortable with this line of questioning.
"How have you, and all of his friends, dealt with the period since he's died?" asked Morgan. To which Ridgeley replied, "I would imagine much like anyone else does. There's a period of grief, and it's a difficult adjustment. A loss of a great friend is traumatic and emotionally tough. Almost as emotionally tough as the Dallaglio Cycle Slam!"
"You really don't like talking about the past, right?" said Morgan.
Ridgeley responded by saying that he wasn't there to discuss his own career or the death of his friend, continuing: "I'd much rather be discussing the Dallaglio Cycle Slam and it's good work for people who haven't had the privileges of you and I. I think that's rather a more worthy subject matter."
The 18-day, 1,100-mile cycling event ultimately raised $1.4 million for charity.
The following year, Ridgeley started to revisit the legacy of Wham! in the public eye – firstly with an uncredited cameo appearance in the film Last Christmas, which of course, heavily featured the band's legendary song.
In 2019, Andrew also published a book called Wham!: George & Me which looked back at his musical career and longtime friendship with Michael. There, Ridgeley admitted that he had some questions around George's death.
The coroner hadn't deemed it to be suspicious, but Ridgeley wrote: "That the circumstances of [George's] death seemed unclear only compounded the distress. Without any real closure the grieving seemed terribly raw."
"A heart condition was eventually recorded as the cause of death," added Ridgeley, "but there are still a number of questions. It now seems as if we may never know what really happened.
"We don't like our lives being monitored, so when someone dies alone, perhaps there are always answers that remain out of reach. It still feels uncomfortable though. God knows what it must be like for George's family."
In a new interview with People ahead of the Wham! documentary's release, Ridgeley recalled the last time he saw George Michael before his death in 2016.
"We'd have regular games of Scrabble," he recalled. "He'd beaten me the week before, and I was exacting my revenge. It took us right back to just... the essence of our schoolboy friendship and one-upmanship. It was a game that stimulated him, and me also."
"That was a few months prior to his passing," he added.
But what about Andrew's life now? In a new chat with the BBC, Ridgeley shared that he's preparing to cycle from John O'Groats to Lands End to raise money for the suicide prevention charity Papyrus. You can find out more about their journey on the JustGiving page, and Ridgeley has been sharing updates on social media.
"I get asked, 'Do you still write songs?'" said Ridgeley. "And I suppose I could but it's an awful lot of work trying to get them played [on radio].
"Songs need to be performed and they need to be heard, preferably listened to. There's far too much hearing of music around, and not enough listening."
Wham! is now available to watch on Netflix.
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After teaching in England and South Korea, David turned to writing in Germany, where he covered everything from superhero movies to the Berlin Film Festival.
In 2019, David moved to London to join Digital Spy, where he could indulge his love of comics, horror and LGBTQ+ storytelling as Deputy TV Editor, and later, as Acting TV Editor.
David has spoken on numerous LGBTQ+ panels to discuss queer representation and in 2020, he created the Rainbow Crew interview series, which celebrates LGBTQ+ talent on both sides of the camera via video content and longform reads.
Beyond that, David has interviewed all your faves, including Henry Cavill, Pedro Pascal, Olivia Colman, Patrick Stewart, Ncuti Gatwa, Jamie Dornan, Regina King, and more — not to mention countless Drag Race legends.
As a freelance entertainment journalist, David has bylines across a range of publications including Empire Online, Radio Times, INTO, Highsnobiety, Den of Geek, The Digital Fix and Sight & Sound.
