Michael Cragg, journalist and author

Michael Cragg is a prolific music journalist for The Guardian, The Observer, Vogue and more, and as of last year, the published author of Reach for the Stars, an oral history of the mind-boggling period of British pop music that flourished between 1996 and 2006.

We discuss the heady confluence of factors that lead to an era bookended by the Spice Girls and the X Factor, Michael's own complicated relationship with music and his queerness, and Xenomania's contributions to the UK pop canon.

We also discuss music by Girls Aloud, Björk, and George Michael.

You can follow Michael on Instagram here, and his Spotify companion playlist to the book here. Purchase Reach for the Stars (now available in paperback) at your favourite independent bookseller.

Listen to all previous guest choices in one handy Spotify playlist, Selections from Tracks of Our Queers and follow the pod on Instagram.

Transcript

Michael Cragg
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Andy Gott: [00:00:00] Hello, my name is Andy Gott, and you're listening to Tracks of Our Queers. Each episode, I chat to a fascinating queer person about one song, one album, and one artist that have soundtracked their life. I've been voraciously consuming Michael Cragg's musical journalism for well over a decade, and the chances are so have you, via The Guardian, The Observer, Vogue, GQ, or a dozen more outlets.

For want of a better phrase, Michael just gets it. A classically British irreverence paired with a sincere respect for quality. Last year, he channeled these traits into an oral history of one of the most bonkers periods in pop music, the decade of 1996 2006 in the 

beginning with the Spice Girls and ending with The X Factor, Reach for the Stars features over 100 interviews with pop stars, producers, songwriters, and video directors. from within the eye of the storm.

Since this conversation was recorded last [00:01:00] year the book has since been published in paperback and if you're yet to read it ensure you order a copy once you're finished listening.

It's an absurd sometimes a bit sad. But phenomenal read. producing this podcast is very much a one queer band and listener contributions go a huge way in keeping the light switched on. If you're interested in supporting me, you can do so by buying me a coffee through the link in the show notes. Alternatively, leaving a rating or review is also greatly appreciated.

It's a free and easy way to help the podcast reach new listeners. Thank you in advance for your support. Enough from me. Over to Michael.

Well, hello Michael. Welcome to Tracks of our Queers.

Thank you. Thanks for having me.

So, I usually like to begin with asking my guest what role music took in their slash your childhood, but it feels especially curious to ask that today as I've just literally yesterday finished reading [00:02:00] a 500 page book that you wrote about the role music took in my childhood amongst billions of other people and we will get on to that later, but...

Let's begin with your childhood. Specifically, what was playing at home as you were growing up, and then what music were you starting to seek out yourself?

So my musical childhood, my household wasn't particularly musical I just remember like Meatloaf's Battle of Hell, my dad was obsessed with that album. And then my parents split up when I was eight. So that album left. my mum would listen to, Fleetwood Mac's greatest hits, there was some Belinda Carlyle, I remember really thinking that Fleetwood Mac only had that one album which was the best of, with like a green cover.

And I mean, do we need any other albums, really? even the Belinda Carlile one [00:03:00] might have been a greatest hit. So my exposure to, music was the best songs that those people have done, and I thought all albums should be like, twelve singles, essentially. And so maybe that's why I eventually, sort of, sort out, I mean not sort out Michael Jackson, because he was literally everywhere in the 80s and early 90s, but Dangerous was the first album that I asked for in 1991 when I was 10 ish.

So I got that for Christmas on tape and I listened to it all the time. I didn't know that a tape could break. But I broke the tape because we would play in the car i'd make my mom and sister listen to it on long car journeys. So michael jackson was the first person that I was of my own accord, like, I want to listen to this person all the time.

And I [00:04:00] really did. And I didn't even really go back to like his other albums necessarily, like I had them and I really liked off the wall. And I did really like bad, but it was for some reason dangerous that I just became obsessed with. I think maybe because it was around the time we had MTV, 

And his videos were just on all the time. So remember the time was on basically on a loop. You could like literally time sort of three videos and then that would come back on again. I was obsessed with how cinematic they were, how over the top they were, how expensive they looked. So yeah, Michael Jackson was the first one with that Dangerous album, and then I'd only listen to any music made by someone with the surname Jackson.

So I would listen to Janet, Michael, some of the Jacksons, mainly Michael Jackson's solo stuff I was obsessed and I really became a bit weird about Madonna and Prince because I knew they were rivals. In this superstar, 80s way, I just thought, well, I've picked my one now, so it's just going to be Michael.[00:05:00] 

Yeah. I think a lot of us can relate to that sensation, but of course there would've been a point where you would've naturally submitted to the powers of Madonna and Prince 

And that did happen. especially Madonna, I remember buying all the singles from Ray of Light album. that was the album that got me into her. like you just absorbed these people like I absorbed Madonna and I absorbed Prince and had absorbed Michael Jackson just from being alive in the 80s and 90s even if you didn't listen to the album tracks.

And again, because I'd grown up listening to the best songs, I just sort of knew those Madonna songs, I didn't really care about album tracks until I got like Ray of Light and listened to that whole thing. And that was probably because it was so different to what she had done before.

And Frozen was this weird thing that I couldn't really get my head around I was moving in that direction of You know, which we get to later with Bjork, but I was into this idea of pop that was starting to become weirder and maybe Frozen was the first example of I don't [00:06:00] really like this.

Oh, actually, it's growing on me. Oh, actually, this is amazing. and now I'm fully obsessed. the videos for that was sort of weird and know, darker and sort of strange. And I liked that. And then years later, I would go back and appreciate erotica. I quite liked anyone whose albums were maligned.

like getting into Michael Jackson with dangerous was a bit like, Well, he's, that's not his peak, like, why are you getting into him now? Like, that's the album that didn't do as well as the others. it was around the time that, people were starting to think, he's a bit sort of naff and the dancing is not as great as everyone used to think it was, etc.

But I was quite into that. I was like, oh, no one likes Erotica by Madonna. Maybe that will be my Favorite Madonna album, which it sort of is now.

Michael Cragg: and you say that you're gay, Michael, just to confirm.

Andy Gott: Yes. I know wow. How weird that I would obsess [00:07:00] over something that everyone else hates.

Michael Cragg: Yeah, especially Erotica as an album, as a piece of work.

It's funny that you pick up on Frozen, because I remember, I'm a few years younger than you, but I do remember Frozen coming out in the shops. I remember specifically being in an Asda and picking up, I think I had the CD1 and CD2 of Frozen in my hands and Mum was like, obviously you can only buy one, why would you ever buy two?

And I'm thinking, well I need both. I remember by that point, I had no idea of the context of Madonna and what she'd achieved in the 80s because I was too young to get my head around that. But I could still pick up that in the ether, there was this energy that she was doing something very different.

And she was doing something which went against the grain for her. But it was something that a lot of people were responding to went on to be this huge smash for her and now with the benefit of hindsight. It's one of her strongest songs ever

Yeah. And I think also it spoke to this idea that she was sort of ever [00:08:00] changing and like evolving in this way that people talk about still, you know, sort of changing with each album, this is the next chapter. And I guess in some way as a young gay person that sort of spoke to me in a way that you could shift who you are and change who you are, what you are and what you represent. And also she was a supporter of, the community in a time when other people weren't. And it wasn't until I read more or listened to Erotica especially that there are songs on there that are dedicated to people that she'd lost.

To HIV and AIDS, reading that, I think it was on Immaculate Collections, she put a leaflet in the CD that explained to people what it was to get tested, to wear condoms, And I don't know that I got all of that at that time, because it was obviously pre internet and I lived in, Kent, it wasn't like, I had to struggle to get certain music magazines 

So it was just learning that she was a vital figure in that way, not just as a pop star. And I think Michael Jackson was more for me, like the pop [00:09:00] and the performance of it. I really studied that and I watched a lot of live. Like, I remember recording The Dangerous Tour off of my TV and only recording the first half an hour and then me realising later and I'd missed like the whole middle section, but I still watched that it almost became part of that tour was that it suddenly broke from half of one song and then picked up in Thriller like 40 minutes later, but I just was obsessed with, with that sort of performance side of it.

I love that. Your name, Michael Cragg, will be familiar to, anyone who seeks out any sort of music journalism in the UK and beyond. I think one of the reasons that I've connected with your writing, and I'm assuming others have too, over the years is You have this deep understanding of context and history and pop culture And the place of where things sit But it's married with being very much on the pulse.

Andy Gott: So in Specifically, you know reference to this 500 page [00:10:00] tome reach for the stars Why was the decade of 96 to 2006 the one that you chose to do a deep dive into? So it's quite complicated because I think people expect me to have. I've lived it in a way that maybe you did, and I didn't really because I'm a tiny bit older. And so by the time the Spice Girls came out, it was obviously 96, which is where the book starts for that reason, because I felt like you could not start with the Spice Girls.

But I was like 14, 15. And so I liked them. I was incredibly aware of them because you couldn't move for the Spice Girls. But I wasn't, obsessed with them, , or what sort of followed in a way that I perhaps became later. And there are sort of multiple reasons, I guess. One was, I was becoming a teenager who thought that Maybe if I talked about that music, I would be revealing a lot about myself, that I would be telling people basically that I [00:11:00] was gay.

And at that point, I had only really heard that word used as an accusation, it was never like, are you gay? It was you are gay. And so I was a bit like, okay, I liked pop. I'd gone through a lot of that with Michael Jackson, because to say to someone that you were a Michael Jackson fan, especially as the years went on, was not a good thing, So I'd keep two secrets.

I'd keep it secret that I liked Michael Jackson. I'd keep it secret that I thought I was gay. all of that sort of big, shiny pop, especially as like someone going into their teen years, was not something that I was super keen to shout from the rooftops. And school is not somewhere where, you know... I'm going to start chatting away about Spice World So that didn't happen I moved into like other things. I liked Madonna. I really loved R& B. I would listen to TLC and Destiny's Child. I was moving into that sort of area of pop that was sort of R& B and that was cool in a way.

I was trying to seek some sort of cool aspect of music. And then I got into indie in a [00:12:00] way that was maybe like, performative or slightly hiding again who I was. So it wasn't until lockdown, you know, fast forward a lot.

Well, I guess once I started writing about pop music as a journalist, I just was like, well, that's ridiculous. Like, I love this. I'm just going to write about it. I'm going to immerse myself in it. It's great and fun and like escapist and brilliant. I love. all those aspects of like, the Michael Jackson stuff now condensed into dance routines and everything's great.

And then in lockdown, like a lot of people, I was like, Oh, let's just go back to some of these old songs and sort of Not for the first time, because I knew all of them, but just, like, really appreciate them, and how brilliant they are, how brilliantly, sort of, made they are. I mean, not all of it. Some of it is terrible.

Some of the pop stars are awful. But, the great ones are great, and , Even if you just look at it from like a sort of songwriter producer thing there, some of the biggest names in pop worked on these songs.

Max Martin, Steve Mac, Stargate, all these people that have worked with huge people and are still working now. that's why [00:13:00] I wanted to do that. That's a really long answer. But basically, I thought it would also be incredibly funny to write a book about this period In this oral history format, which is usually reserved for quite like, high brow, you know, the wire, or like the history of Radiohead So I thought it'd be funny, first of all, to do that with these pop stars, and then also I wanted them to be able to speak and tell that story and relive like the highs and the lows of that period.

Michael Cragg: Yeah, 100%. And like you say, there's masterpieces there. And the bad stuff, okay, not always, but sometimes the bad stuff is interesting. Which you can't always say about different eras. There is something very interesting about some of the shite that came out from that era.

Yeah, it's like a time capsule in that sense. the good is great, the bad is, is sort of catastrophic, like it's really bad, which is great in its own way. It's the middling stuff that you're not bothered about, like when they're padding out an album because they have to 

Andy Gott: and the good pop stars and some of the bad pop [00:14:00] stars because a lot of it was just they didn't get the chance necessarily, you know, so cut through, you have to have a certain amount of success very quickly. probably some incredible singers got shunted to the side and never made it because for one reason or another the band that they were in missed their chance or a song that they were about to be given as a huge single got given to someone else and that happened a lot in that period because it was controlled by quite powerful A& Rs and label bosses who could just be like, you know what girl thing, you're not going to have Pure and Simple anymore, we're going to give that to Hearsay, and Hearsay are going to sell like a million copies of it.

Michael Cragg: The book is Written with such care, but also a critical eye, And you devote entire chapters to, of course, the Spice Girls, All Saints, Girls Aloud, the Sugababes, which I thoroughly enjoyed, just [00:15:00] the deep dives into all of those legendary girl bands, which I now feel so proud of, like, proud seems like a strange word, because I had nothing to do with it, but... Earlier in the year, I went to a Sugababes concert in Sydney, and it was their first Australian gigs in, years , and yeah,the likelihood is that half the room was probably from the UK, but there were a lot of Australians there too, who had a strong connection to the Sugababes, the power, like, the magic in that room, that atmosphere, was like, wow, like, some of these People who make people feel so good now came from that time and specifically place They were making a very british kind of music, of course with huge influences from sweden and the u.

s But it was specifically british and I guess It speaks to the reality, but I, I kind of feel like the book ends on a bit of a sour note with the X Factor. it made me feel a little bit icky to go through, the highs and the lows, but the X Factor was particularly a low. but you can see the influence of [00:16:00] the X Factor right up to today in the stuff that people are listening to in the charts now.

Andy Gott: Yeah, I mean I ended it in 2006 because Smash Hits closed and Top of the Pops finished and CDUK changed and Pop World changed, so all these things that were like big kind of... Totems of that period that helped all these acts kind of survive and succeed had gone, and that was for multiple reasons, but you know, the X Factor coming along was one, the internet was another, Myspace was about to come and create a different sort of pop star.

Like, Lily Allen is not like... Jamilia or a member of a girl band, the songs she did are not like any of those songs. They're all deeply obsessed with reality and detail they're not general The truth authenticity, all of that.

so that's why I ended it there. But you're right, the X factor chapter does not have a huge amount of. when you look back, Leona, Bleeding Love is incredible. It's a proper one off single in that way, but[00:17:00] I'm not sure the follow ups ever matched anywhere near it.

And Alexandra Burke, who sort of came slightly after, but again, great. Singles, but that's sort of it because the conveyor belt of it meant that like the next ones were coming so quickly, Little Mix and One Direction came a bit later, but like this period specifically was Cutthroat, you know, Shane Ward did sort of help by winning season two, but, he sort of says like three albums and they'd kind of moved on, But they're not going to spend as much time, as much money on him if his sort of singles aren't doing as well. And then that's mainly because another one has come along in that point. And it means that labels are no longer searching out new pop stars because they can just wait for this TV show to come along.

And you have all of the mechanisms of it and the sob stories and the way that the contestants were being treated Just having [00:18:00] to relive all these traumatic experiences. Like, I had no idea that you write on your form, what is your highest point so far, and what is your lowest.

It's like when you enter the x factor, so that they have that on record, if you've been bullied, We can pull you into a room and have a chat with you about that.

Michael Cragg: put it in the spreadsheet. Yeah,

Andy Gott: Yeah. We can just do like a control F and find bullying on our spreadsheet and see what we can 

Michael Cragg: Gay, coming 

Andy Gott: Yeah. Trauma, trauma, and trauma.

Michael Cragg: We, could honestly talk for hours about this book alone, so thank yourself, Lucky, that we're not in person, because, you know, at least you can end the Zoom when you want to, but the, the intention of this podcast is to specifically explore the connection between the music we love and our identity as queer people, and we're about to talk about your own experience through your selections, but queerness does.

run through your book, and it runs through the period that your book covers. And I think it starts of course with the obvious and outsized impact that the Spice Girls had on queer youth, which [00:19:00] really didn't start to be acknowledged as much until a few years ago in my mind. We know that the Spice Girls always had gay fans, but it wasn't until those gay fans grew up a little bit more that...

It was talked about more. And of course then you've got people like Steps and S Club and Girls Aloud and Sugababes, all these bands who are considerably sustained by queer audiences to this day. Not solely, but considerably. But the bits that stood out to me were when you were speaking directly to queer performers, like queer boy band members, and and the shame involved.

And really, the fear of impacted sales and the loss of money due to coming out. And I find that you wove those very real realities of queer life through a book which covers a time when, it feels like things were so different, but it wasn't that long ago, and maybe they're actually not that different.

I don't know. Yeah.

Andy Gott: Yeah, I mean it's a time of Section 28 that only changed in 2002, So [00:20:00] that fear was there the way like we could even talk about ourselves or be taught about ourselves in that way was not done. And so it's into that climate that this kind of happens.

And so you just have this generalized fear, I think. H from Steps, for example, being put into a band that is his dream, his dream was to be in a band to release even one single and perform on Top of the Pops. he'd done that by the time 5678 came out. So he was sort of living. life that he'd always wanted to live coming from like a small village where he was from what he sort of intimated like bullied by people. So not going to necessarily rock that boat, which I think was the general consensus You can talk about it amongst yourselves, let's not put it out there, let's not, allow this to, define you, but also to, maybe make fans turn away from you, especially if you're in a boy band, and you're maybe, like, the heartthrob, you cannot have, idea that girls might [00:21:00] not fancy you, which in turn might mean they don't buy your records anymore or they might not buy tickets to your show.

So, if you're the one gay person in a band of five, that's a lot of pressure to think, well if I do this, we might not be successful anymore. And everything that these people have worked for is going to be over. So that's a lot of pressure to have on people. And obviously, a lot of them didn't come out until later, H was open with his bandmates, but he wasn't out publicly until after their success.

Stephen Gately took some time as well. I was sort of reminded of this when I watched the George Michael documentary on Channel 4. Like, gay people were written about in a horrible way in the papers.

it wasn't beyond the realms that they would get a lot of terrible press, that they would see, horrible things written about them in the tabloids. George Michael had had negative pushback in America, so his songs weren't played on the radio in America, Mary J.

Blige's record label did [00:22:00] stop that cover being on the American version of that greatest hits. So there were examples of something negative happening. Will Young is an interesting example because he was perhaps the first person where it felt like he was comfortable being an out gay man who was out to his family and friends, had been to university and been a gay man in public, and then was like, okay, the week that this huge single comes out with all this pressure, I'm also going to.

Come out is sort of amazing. I mean, whether he was pushed into that, I don't know, but to do it. I remember that front page of that newspaper and thinking, he's one what was the biggest show at that time. But it's interesting, isn't it? 

But now there's talk about it. there's just a lot of pop stars that have to do a lot of interviews in June and June only. And in that month they talk about some of their most traumatic experiences, which I feel like maybe they think they have to, and I don't know if that's necessarily a good thing.

Michael Cragg: The beast continues to evolve.

Andy Gott: Yeah, and lyrically people are being much more open. [00:23:00] I mean, Bloom by Troye Sivan is literally about bottoming. But I feel like there is some other aspects of it that are a bit like, I get a lot of emails where it says queer pop star, or gay, and you're like, okay, that's great, but why are you telling me that from the off, like, what are we saying that we're like, defining this person as that, and then maybe putting them into a certain area where they'll not be able to Be in the sort of bigger pop world.

I think you're on to something there, but I write my emails as queer podcast interview I can just imagine someone reading it and being like yeah, and what's so special? Okay, read my entire

Michael Cragg: point 

Andy Gott: know but Tracks of Our Queers is a great title. Just fyi

Michael Cragg: thank you a very good friend gave me that title right back to you Michael 

Andy Gott: your selection. So you picked a track, an album, and an artist. which track did you pick and why?

I picked Girls Aloud's. Untouchable, the album version, [00:24:00] not the horrendous single edit, which crashed in at number 11 and ruining their run of top ten singles. I picked the album, the full six minute track. So, yes. Why did I pick that song? I think because it has, I mention it in the book, but it has like a key moment in my life, where I was listening to that song, I was probably still in my like, hiding phase, and I remember distinctly listening to that song, and like looking at myself in the mirror.

And just being like, that bit where it's like beautiful robots dancing alone, and just being like, you have to be who you are, this is getting out of control. I'm not sure I did anything about it immediately, but I really remember that bit. there's something about that song, even though you adapt lyrics to your own life, I'm not entirely sure, it's about anything to do with that, but there's just something about the [00:25:00] lyrics and the general sort of, It's sort of sad, wistful, I guess, is the word.

It's like wistful banger, pensive banger. And it has that melancholic aspect, but also this like, come on, like you can, it sort of drives itself forward in that way. And there's something about like in my dreams, 40 stories tall, I'm really ruining Miranda's lyrics, but that idea of like, in my dreams, I was.

someone else. I was being this person that I thought I could be and should be. And so there was always something about that. And maybe that was also the first time where I was like, God, these pop songs, but like these songs just because they are pop.

Doesn't mean I don't sort of always known that because it made me like feel a certain way But I'm not really someone that cares that much about lyrics necessarily it was always about like the way it felt or like I really like melodies that [00:26:00] make me, feel something.

Even if, you know, I just love, like, a good melody. They could be singing anything. That's why I love Max Martin. You know, when it doesn't really make sense. I'm like, well, I don't really care. And people are very obsessed with lyrics now. 

Michael Cragg: Xenomania, is that

Andy Gott: yeah, I mean, who?

Michael Cragg: of Girls Aloud?

Andy Gott: Yeah, exactly. So it didn't really matter to me. It was more, like, how it made me feel. But with that song, I was suddenly, like, oh, these lyrics are, like, really... speaking to my soul, just to sound awful. And so yeah, that is why that song always sticks out to me. Especially because they were a girl band, you know, even buying a CD of theirs was a thing.

It was like an admission, or a sort of, this is who you are, kind of thing. So, that song is important, and it still upsets me that it didn't get to the top ten.

Michael Cragg: you mentioned earlier this notion of Going into a store, which we obviously do much less now, and that act of making a physical purchase is in a way acknowledging to the world, at the [00:27:00] very least to the checkout person. That you're a bit gay, and it's something that we can laugh about now, but it really isn't until you articulate it that I can go right back to that exact place and that emotion.

And... I haven't experienced it in years, which is obviously great, and it's difficult to unpick where that discomfort lies was it a queer thing or an awkward teenage early twenties thing, and just generally becoming more confident in your taste and proud of what you like, but queerness runs all the way through there.

It's impossible to extricate it completely, I

Andy Gott: And it's linked with pop because pop is such a sort of signifier of that, to the point where even now I've heard people say, Oh yeah, my friend's husband really likes Britney Spears. And even just by saying that, it's like, we all know what you mean by that.

And so I can even probably connect when I started, you know, the iTunes [00:28:00] store was like a big thing because I don't have to go into a shop now, I don't have to like, perform this sort of ritual, or scared ritual, or whatever, or get someone else to get it for me, because I can just... go back and buy all this stuff on my iTunes and no one will ever know and I can listen to it on my iPod.

I used to give my mum a list of all the singles I wanted, because she worked near the nearest art price, and then she would just hand it to the person behind the thing. My son wants these, and then they would sort of go off and get them, and then she'd bring them home.

Michael Cragg: okay, Ally Mother 

Andy Gott: And also, because I had to have everything, I'm sure every gay person is like this, I had to have them all on the first day they came out. I had to have CD1, CD2, 

which inevitably would just have loads of awful remixes on, but I just needed to have them to help whoever I was into at that time, like, achieve their goals. I was very into, like, whoever I liked being successful.

Michael Cragg: the gay, the gay experience at

Andy Gott: Spending a lot of money on useless tat. 

Michael Cragg: [00:29:00] Now, in Reach for the Stars, the influence of Xenomania shines through in the Girls Aloud chapter and, of course, crops up in the Sugababes chapter 2, and we all, if you're a Girls Aloud fan, you just sort of submit to their brilliance we've heard all these stories over the years and you've spoken directly to the people at the core of it 

But, the girls are magnetic themselves. No one is doubting their charisma and talent. But, in your opinion, how much of the pop entity of Girls Aloud is the girls themselves versus

the Willy Wonka factory.

Andy Gott: I think it's fair to say that if they had had their way and hadn't worked with Xenomania on that, first album we wouldn't be talking about them now, because of the way the show worked. They were incredibly raw. They [00:30:00] didn't know what they were doing. You know, they hadn't gone through years of behind the scenes stuff like a lot of acts had.

They hadn't auditioned together. They didn't even know each other. they'd not sung together, So they would have. imploded, or they would have just become like a sort of Atomic Kitten style girl band, making that kind of music that was sort of generic y. you know, maybe it would have had a couple more hits, but it wouldn't have been as exciting. Xenomania transformed them into something that stood out at that time, they needed to be the sort of antithesis of the manufactured TV talent show sound coming out with a big cover, like already at that point, but people were sort of rolling their eyes at it.

And a lot of those other acts had gone, S Club 7, Steps, you know, so it wasn't that world. So Xenomania did. a good thing in sort of taking them completely under their wing. Louis Walsh not really being interested in them allowed that to happen. I think if someone had been more focused on them I don't know if that would have happened, you 

Michael Cragg: [00:31:00] do have to thank him for something

Andy Gott: yeah, for being sort of useless as a manager of anyone other than Westline, but as you say, it is the girls that sell those songs, because not to put the Saturdays down, they got some Xenomania songs and they don't work in the same way, and I don't think Xenomania were as excited about 

them as they were with Girls Aloud. You know, you had all these different personalities that clash and chime together in that way. Brian was saying it was really hard.

with the Sugababes, they sing together because their voices work together and they can harmonize and they've sung together since they were 11 years old or whatever. with Girls Aloud, their voices didn't work like that. So on those songs, 

You literally have. two words by one, three words by another, stitched together, or individual lines or choruses done by Nadine, and other bits done by Sarah, they had to do it in that way.

And so maybe other producers wouldn't have tried to do that. they hated it at first, and they sort of tried to ditch them. But they realized quickly that what they were giving them was something [00:32:00] that stood out. And thank God that they Stayed with it.

Michael Cragg: thank God.

Andy Gott: Thank God.

Michael Cragg: so the album that you picked what is it?

Andy Gott: So straight from Girls Aloud to Bjork, which you know, is seamless. It's Homogenic by Bjork, 

Michael Cragg: So yeah, while everyone else was listening to Spice World and you know, Five, I was listening to Homogenic, but this was sort of, I was still into Michael Jackson at this point, like history had come out and I was still in that world. I don't know what possessed me other than seeing the artwork for the album in a R Price and being quite mesmerized by it.

Andy Gott: And I knew who she was. I knew about Post and Debut and had loved the Human Behavior video, from Debut. 

I found that interesting, but I hadn't really gone any further than that. And then with Homogenic, I had vouchers from like birthday or Christmas and I just bought it. And I remember my mom being a bit like, are you sure? Because I think she knew Bjork as this caricature of weird Icelandic vocal tics and, [00:33:00] you know, beating up a journalist at the airport.

And that sort of spitting image idea of hers. So I was like, yeah, I want to buy this. And I just was like obsessed with it. And I think even the title I thought was interesting, like homogenic. I was a bit like, what does that mean? is it a sort of sexuality thing? It's like homosexual, homo. So I was like, Oh, this is interesting and sort of weird.

And then I just. became obsessed in a way that I hadn't since Dangerous, really. I bought all the singles and the special edition version of the album. She represented a different way of being, a weirdo in a good way, not a negative way I loved that she was doing things that were strange taking a sort of obtuse look even if it was a straight relationship it was still done in a way that wasn't like straight straight it was sort of queered by just how she sort of approached it i guess because english isn't her first language the lyrics were always slightly off kilter that opened me up [00:34:00] to that, like I had always been tall, so I had always sort of stood out in a way that I didn't really want to, as I got older and I couldn't really hide away.

And so she sort of owned. Being a bit weirder and not shying away from stuff that was really important as I became a teenager.

Michael Cragg: Yeah. I love that summary. the queerness of the album, which might not always be obvious in the sense that yes, that incredible artwork is effectively Alexander McQueen drag. the album itself came to her in a point in her career where she'd had two hugely successful albums.

And this would be a third massive album. she was also figuring out, Who she was as an artist Not repeating what she had done in her previous two albums, and really finding her feet in terms of who she wanted to be, [00:35:00] and of course that album, you know, whether you're a huge Björk fan or you just like the huge songs, everyone is aware of the role that Homogenic plays in her back catalogue, and it's kind of like, you know, that ray of light, velvet rope.

type album, which interestingly all came out at a very similar time, like What Was in the Water, Boys for Pelé by Tori Amos, you know, these kind of massive albums which were getting huge critical success, huge commercial success, and have stood the test of time.

Andy Gott: Yeah and once again I loved the velvet rope even more than Janet and homogenic more than post it was me being drawn to these like slight left turns that people took or people being like I'm slightly done with being super famous, 

I want to explore a slightly different part of me. And I really loved those albums. So even erotica, I guess, is a sort of like, okay, I was huge in the eighties. I'm just sort of gonna try this now and let's see what happens. velvet rope is definitely that she's signed an absolutely huge record deal.[00:36:00] 

And then was like, I'm going to make this album about. aspects of her life. So yeah, those albums really appealed to me, and Homogenic is definitely one of them. I was raised by, my mum my sister and my nan, and so, like, important, strong women, obviously, in a gay man's life are very important.

And that album cover, I was, like, fierce. nurturing warrior queen person. And you mentioned Alexander McQueen and I loved looking at the liner notes of all these albums and especially with Bjork because it just opened up this world of all these amazing people that you could draw all these lines between 

Michael Cragg: Yes, that is such an important part of that experience as well, That time was so special and it's been seen in, music history I think someone like kate bush was an enormous person in terms of Introducing people who are interested in left of centre quirky, for want of a better word.

Kate Bush could be the gateway to other artists but she also was a gateway. Kate Bush, Bjork, Tori Amos, PJ Harvey, [00:37:00] and so on. By having this big commercial success, but being very left of field, they do usher in and make space for dozens, multiple other artists who kind of Bring this alternative nature into the charts, which is kind of Directly at odds with the type of music that you cover in Reach for the Stars But for people like us who love all of it, we just benefit from all of it the more the merrier, give it to me

Andy Gott: Yeah. And I think it does link to Xenomania you know, because of the Michael Jackson and the Bjork stuff, if you put those two together, it's sort of weird pop, I was drawn to sort of Timberland and Neptune and being able to do like Milkshake for Khalees and it being a top three single and then Cinemania doing stuff with Girls Aloud and it still being popular and catchy like, to be able to do both of those things is incredible.

But I also just loved, do still love that pure pop thrill of like reach for the stars of the song, or don't stop [00:38:00] moving, both have equal weight to me. I find it slightly more thrilling when someone is trying to push it in a way that's fun.

like Sophie in the PC music world, some of that is unlistenable, but when sort of Charlie nails it, like that's the sort of spot where I'm like, Oh, that's really interesting.

Michael Cragg: completely agree

Andy Gott: All right, before we move on homogenic look It's a no skip album, but what would be your top three favorite standout me

I love Unravel, which is like the sort of slower song where she talks about, and again, it's like talking about love in a way that isn't just, you know, I love you, I miss you. It's like, while you were away love came undone. Like, you know, it's this idea of like, it's unraveling this person for the whole time they're away and when they come back they're gonna have to make it new again, which I liked.

Michael Cragg: It's very open relationship vibes

Andy Gott: yes, exactly, very [00:39:00] forward thinking. Yoga, I think, just to be really obvious. I do love that song. And I used to love Pluto,

Michael Cragg: Yes,

Andy Gott: like, absolutely insane one. I used to turn that up really loud. And it, I don't know if it was just the tape, or the CD that I must have had, or my very bad stereo, but it would, really rumble in my ear, 

And I love that. But my mom, she did not like that. She was used to at least hearing, you know, some micro, like, black or white coming out of the stereo, not this insane sort of techno meltdown.

Michael Cragg: Okay, Michael, which artist did you pick and why?

Andy Gott: George Michael and I picked him because of Outside. the press was awful about it, and even sort of, tried to add this [00:40:00] narrative of him potentially having AIDS because of what happened with his former partner and you know them flying over to Brazil to try and like talk to his family about it so all of that was happening and he could have easily just ignored it or continued with apologizing, which he never really did.

And I think the expectation was he would do some sort of huge apology and, you know, beg for forgiveness. But actually he released Outside, which is hilarious and a banger. no shame. It was like... You know, this is funny. It happened.

I'm gonna have like disco spinning urinals. I'm gonna have like me dressed up as a policeman. I'm gonna have it all, the lyrics are amazing. the sort of line about community service is brilliant. And so that I think was, to me, one of the first examples of [00:41:00] celebrating what happened 

And just in a very sort of clever, funny way, which is sort of who he was. And then I watched the Wham documentary, the Netflix one at the weekend. You know, he was closeted for a long time for reasons that we've spoken about as well that this happened in the 80s with Wham!

and this idea that potentially something could happen and, he did tell Andrew but the idea was let's keep it quiet and I didn't necessarily have obviously those pressures exactly but I did have maybe my own pressures on myself of not opening up and not doing it at certain points.

And so I really related to that, missed opportunity of him being able to do it then when he was 19. if he'd perhaps told some other people, they might have said, yes, you should come out. But actually, his close friends were more protective of him. that meant that he was locked in the closet a bit longer.

And then he talked about wanting to focus on his career, and I think that's true for a lot of [00:42:00] people, they put a lot of emphasis on getting external validation, affirmation from outside that like, you are enough as you are, and so maybe adding to that is gonna cause some issues, or take away from what you've achieved, as long as you tick those boxes of life and career, then you don't need to be anything else 

So for all of those reasons, and for being an incredible songwriter, singer, musician, producer, I think is just incredible. And I thought it was interesting if you listen to the album now, he'd already come out 

Michael Cragg: It's all 

Andy Gott: you know, yeah, like fast love.

It's not about, you know, a straight relationship or even a relationship. It's about cruising and all of that. And spinning the wheel is about something along those lines, but with a sort of much sadder aspect 

Michael Cragg: We're playing with fire. Yeah.

Andy Gott: Yeah, taking a [00:43:00] risk every time you do those things, which he'd obviously had experience of and also had lost someone to that disease, and the album is dedicated to that person.

So in that documentary, there's sort of an old interview with him where he does say like, I felt like I'd already come out on the album, it's just no one really picked up on it and no one sort of asked me about it. And so that's a sort of interesting thing of like, if it's in the work, does someone need to actively come out in that way or, or maybe for some people, that's how they want to do it.

And in the end, he did come out in a very spectacular way.

Michael Cragg: He's such a special person, George Michael, and as the years go on, my love and respect and appreciation for him just grows, I almost just want to go back to my younger self when he was alive, and just be like, appreciate him while [00:44:00] you've got him, because, what an amazing talent, for us, for music lovers, for queer people I don't really have too much to add to what you say.

He makes me, he makes me a bit emotional, George. watching that Wham! documentary, I just wanted to give him a hug. Like, I want to give that young boy who's, who's so talented, but is really struggling with the environment and the nature of how the world was back then, And and just wants to do his best, but and like, you know, aside from the queerness, the fact that he was one of the most handsome people I've ever

laid my eyes on and was plagued with insecurity about his physical appearance, I just wanna grab him and say, You are hot as fuck.

Basically. Yes.

Andy Gott: And that was also part of it, wasn't it? Because he was like, I am incredibly shy and I don't think, especially in the 80s, people believed that anyone that good looking or that wanted to sort of sing or perform was also like, I don't want to be incredibly famous. Like it's only [00:45:00] more recently that we sort of stopped seeing famous people as having the best lives going and actually they maybe don't want to continue to be famous outside of making music or outside of doing what they love.

And I think he was an incredibly beautiful person who looked amazing as a pop star. But once that sort of turned off, he was like, I don't want you to look at me anymore, which is hard to do when you look like George Michael. he talks in that documentary about having this persona, George Michael was a creation both in terms of like a new name, but also like a new person that he could play.

Michael Cragg: Which is queer. Which is pop star. Which is all of these things.

Andy Gott: yeah, exactly. he talks about making faith and Aiming to be as big as Michael Jackson and Madonna and at the same time not really wanting that, but also wanting to achieve something to sort of, verify who he was, 

Michael Cragg: and how that's the magical bit, like he was as talented as them in, maybe different ways, but phenomenal songwriter, producer, dancer, [00:46:00] can do the whole thing, but like you just said, did he really want it? for the same reasons as they did? I don't know, maybe.

But another thing I picked up from that documentary was, I've loved it for a few years because it's always felt a little bit sad and queer to me, but nothing looks the same in the light from the first Wham! album. He confirmed that he wrote it about spending a night at a man's house and having this really beautiful one night stand and now reading the lyrics, it's so obvious I don't know how I didn't pick up on that before, but it It went over my head like it went over the millions of Ram fans heads back in the day And then I can see a direct through line from a song like that To Fast Love, which you've already mentioned, he literally spells out in Fast Love, looking for some affirmation it's this [00:47:00] beautiful banger of a song, which talks about, you know, wanting to have this life full of casual sex and I don't need babies and love, but he ends the song with, I miss my baby. it changed the whole way I view that song, because it doesn't cancel out what he said before, because many of us... Think all of these things at the same time and that's okay But it shows me that at the core of who he is and what he was going through in those mid 90s Nothing could help him through the grief.

He was feeling for that man that he'd lost a few years earlier and he might have wanted casual sex and to focus on being this brilliant pop star But I don't think he ever really fully recovered from losing that guy to AIDS

Andy Gott: And first love is sort of both, happy and sad or like trying to replace. One thing with another and not being able to and I think that[00:48:00] push and pull was probably in a lot of his songs after that point, and maybe like making music didn't come as naturally after that or he just didn't have as much energy for it because there's so much on the album especially that must have been exhausting to sort of do and then release and then promote and then perform, you know, that's hard to, sing that song.

But yeah, I just can't believe he's sort of gone, every year that, Christmas comes around, I saw his Twitter the other day, which is still up. And it's just hilarious. he's just an incredibly,

Michael Cragg: some like Madonna tweet or something? I've seen it before.

Andy Gott: And he's just like, he sort of talks about anal sex on it. it's just him and it's very funny and sort of bitchy and all of those things, like him falling out with Elton John and you know, he, what a legend

Michael Cragg: What a legend, and it's great to have that as his reminder that I will always put him on a pedestal, and I'm very happy to, but at the end of the day, he was also just a bit of a camp queen and you know, the gay who Ginger [00:49:00] Spice ran to in 1998, for better or for worse.

Andy Gott: And what bigger accolade could there be for a gay man to have Geri show up on your doorstep?

Michael Cragg: Michael, what are you working on next?

Andy Gott: Oh, well, that's a good question, because I did have a meeting yesterday about my next book, which is all I can say,

Michael Cragg: Yes, great.

Andy Gott: which makes it seem really mysterious. But actually, the meeting was more like, I'm sort of working on one that could potentially be something.

So I'm doing that. 

Michael Cragg: You, speaking of, you finished the book with a really, really beautiful afterword, which I always appreciate, and in itself, it wraps up with listing your most favorite songs from that 96, 2006 period, and especially how they got you through the pandemic. And I did a little bit of a Spotify search to find that playlist, and I can't find that playlist.

Do you have all of those songs in one place?

Andy Gott: so I have a playlist all the songs in the order that they're mentioned in the book. And then I have, which I think is just called Reach for the Stars. And then I made one as I was writing the [00:50:00] book, which is also out there, called Naughty's Pop.

Michael Cragg: I'll link to them in the show notes for this episode.

Andy Gott: I'll send you, the official Reach for the Stars one, which has the cover on it. starts with a lot of Spice Girls and ends with Leona maybe.

Wonderful. Well, Michael Craig, you are queer and thank you very much for your tracks.

Yay! Great! Thank you, that was really fun.

You can find links to Michael's playlists, his Instagram, and most importantly his book Reach for the Stars in this episode's show notes. You can listen to Michael's musical choices along with all of my previous guests in a Spotify playlist, Selections from Tracks of Our Queers, also linked in the show notes.

Tracks of Our Queers is presented and produced by me, Andy Gott, entirely on unceded Gadigal and Ngarigo Aboriginal land. You can email me your thoughts, recommendations, or gay ramblings to tracksofourcareers at gmail. com. See you next time.