In retrospect, our firm commitment to the mullet was somewhat baffling. As teenagers in the late ‘80s, my friends and I rode our bikes around Long Island, confidently rocketing through Sunrise Highway like Mötley Crüe on their motorcycles in the “Girls, Girls, Girls” video, awful hairstyles be damned. In the summer, we’d play stickball at the back of St. Agnes, pretending to be the New York baseball icons from that time: Keith Hernandez, Don Mattingly, Dwight Gooden, Roger McDowell, Dave Winfield (who attacked the ball like it was someone he detested), and Darryl Strawberry (best know for hitting colossal home runs as casually as making a sandwich).

In the summer of 1988, my friend Joe added George Michael to the pantheon of heroes. Faith had come out the previous fall, and subsequently became a major soundtrack during freshman year of high school, with “Monkey” being the latest huge hit. When MTV wasn’t showing Remote Control, chances are they were playing “Monkey,” or any of the other countless videos from that album. Throughout the whole George Michael phenomenon, Joe was carefully taking mental notes on his man-crush. One afternoon, a few of us went to his apartment and were greeted by Joe in a dark, wide-brim hat, tight jeans, and a 15-year-old’s unsuccessful attempt at a beard, which mainly consisted of awkward patches. He’d seen the “Monkey” video one too many times.

Gathered in his room, he put Faith in the CD player, immediately went right to “Monkey,” and proceeded to blast it at an unnecessarily high volume. Shouting over the music, he essentially gave a dissertation on the song. It was apparent Joe obsessively studied it, like how college students from the ‘60s and ‘70s pored over Dylan lyrics. In between droppings of knowledge, he would emulate some of Michael’s dance moves from the video, punctuating his observations with spin turns and elbow thrusts. On the stout side, Joe’s hat and red scraps of facial hair (featuring more beard than moustache), made him resemble a round, dancing, ginger Amish guido. Somehow, we never laughed.

While I liked Faith, other records from that time commanded more of my attention, like Springsteen’s Tunnel of Love, Document by R.E.M., The Cult’s Electric, Robbie Robertson’s self-titled first solo album, U2’s The Joshua Tree, and the mighty Appetite for Destruction, Guns N’ Roses full-length debut. My equivalent to “Monkey” was “Sweet Child o’ Mine,” a radiant love song that’s also a dynamic, six-minute guitar odyssey with a melodic bass line you can sing along to. Another tune that owned the summer, it replaced “Monkey” as #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 as autumn was about to take over.

This pattern of Michael getting lost in the shuffle started in 1984 (one of the greatest years in music/pop culture) with “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go,” his American mainstream breakthrough. While a fun, bouncy song, it seemed a little too lightweight. About a decade later, I started to appreciate those jazzy organ breakdowns after the chorus, and realized the song was a stellar Disney/Motown combination that could’ve been from Smokey Robinson & the Miracles.

However, back in fall ’84, I was preoccupied with other things, including the Mets first pennant chase in years, Marvel and DC, the dawn of Miami Vice, Billy Ocean’s “Caribbean Queen,” Paul McCartney’s “No More Lonely Nights,” Deep Purple’s comeback single “Perfect Strangers,” and “Hot for Teacher” from Van Halen. (The video inspired my friends and I to go as “young Van Halen” that Halloween. As an 11-year-old guitar fanatic, I was Eddie, and had a cardboard guitar that kind of looked like his iconic Frankenstrat. Emphasis on “kind of.”)

“Last Christmas” came out soon after. Already saturated with melancholy before Michael’s passing on Christmas day, it’s a synth-pop soul classic that manages to be heartfelt minus the sappiness, with short, affecting Christmas bell-like keyboard solos that get at the heart of the song’s loneliness. It’s up there with Michael Jackson’s “Rock with You” for best use of keyboards in a pop tune. Having spent the last three decades welcoming us at our local drugstores every holiday season, adding sublimity to mundane activities, you can easily take “Last Christmas” for granted.

As a writer/producer/arranger, Michael’s ear for melodic nuance is what made him such an exceptional artist. That captivating sax in “Careless Whisper” always seems like it’s about to be accompanied by Robin Leach waxing poetic about the French Riviera. While a sad song, the music has an appealing ostentatiousness reminiscent of ‘80s touchstones like the aforementioned Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous and Dynasty. The exotic, downbeat acoustic guitar and his use of falsetto harmonies in the “Now that you’re gone” section take it into a whole other stratosphere. He sang everything, so the back and forth between the lead and background vocals comes across as a brief interior monologue. Marvin Gaye, David Bowie, and Chris Cornell have done this as well.

Michael’s talent for nuance was again spotlighted on “Everything She Wants,” even down to the distinctive synth squiggle that precedes the second verse. Overall, the keyboards share a similar early hip-hop/science fiction sound as the one’s used in Chaka Khan’s version of “I Feel for You,” which came out at the same time. There’s also those ethereal wordless vocals in the chorus that Michael has as the main melodic hook, comparable to how Van Morrison uses “la la’s” in “Caravan.” As one of the elite singers of his generation, he could actually get away with “Ah-ha-ah, oh-oh-oh, oh-oh-oh, uh-huh-huh, ah-ha-ah, ah-ha-ah, doo doo doo, la la la la la.” Not too many people can make “doo doo” and “la la” sound suave and sensual.

Those last two words accurately describe “Father Figure” and “One More Try” from Faith. They’re the kind of stunning ambient synth ballads that seemed to have come out on a daily basis in the ‘80s, like Roxy Music’s “Avalon” and The Cure’s “All Cats Are Grey” (also from an album called Faith). At a Patti Smith/Television show I saw at Roseland in 2004, Smith did a cover of “Father Figure,” giving me a new appreciation for it. Five years later, “One More Try” was playing at the Bon Vivant Diner in Union Square, while everyone inadvertently did their impression of Hopper’s Nighthawks. The song was a pleasant surprise. I didn’t recall it being that good. But it was on the towering level of his legendary performance of Queen’s “Somebody to Love” at the 1992 tribute concert to Freddie Mercury.

Despite Joe’s stupid hat and embarrassing dance moves, turns out he was on to something.

Matt Leinwohl