Yahoo! Music Album Review

Released on 20/11/06
Label: SonyBMG

While the awards, accolades and warm sense of achievement are all nice, the best thing about having a pop career that's survived a quarter of a century is the endless opportunities to repackage your back catalogue. And so it is that, to celebrate his 25th year as an international icon, George Michael has released yet another greatest hits. Having already collected, and recollected, together the hits of Wham! with "The Final" and "The Best Of", and then his own output with 1998's "Ladies And Gentlemen", it perhaps makes perfect sense to here combine them for the occasion.

Yet while cynics may snipe that it's just another excuse for making money from pop's proverbial old rope - it's not like there's a slew of new hits to add - "TwentyFive" is surprisingly essential listening. Michael's masterstroke is that he makes no attempt to deliver a definitive best of. This isn't an anthology. It doesn't contain all of his hits - only five Wham! songs feature, despite the album coming in double and triple album editions. This isn't even a retrospective in the true, weighing up of the past, sense of the word. It's just a fresh perspective and some stunning songs.

Following the example of "Ladies And Gentleman", which offered one disc "For The Heart" and one "For The Feet", "TwentyFive" is themed "For Living", "For Loving" and in the case of the triple disc edition, "For The Loyal". It's a neat trick which serves him just as well second time round. "For Living" cherry-picks his most danceable moments, from the uncharacteristically complex emotions of Wham!'s "Everything She Wants" to the gospel groove of his and Mary J Blige's cover of "As".

The miracle is that, while style may have changed, the journey from "Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go"'s puffball bounce to the cyber-sex of "Freeek!", via "Fastlove", "Too Funky" and "Outside" is seamless. Instead of jarring, the production - always more inventive than he's given credit for - melds into one hi-tech floor-filler, with Michael's self-assured persona riding the life-affirming wave. "For Loving" pulls similar strokes for the sentimental side of his character. The soft-focus heartache of "Careless Whisper", "Father Figure"'s sleazy murmur and "Older"'s Bond-ian eeriness, combine for a breathless encounter, which deftly skirts schmaltz and cliché, to remind that, when he puts his mind to it, there are few comparable songwriters.

It's not all good news. Some of the latter-day tracks feel like they've been included purely to justify the album's existence, and the triple CD's bonus disc, "For The Loyal" is for completists only, featuring as it does missable covers including "Roxanne". But for the most part, it's an inspired collection, taking familiar songs and making something new and largely compelling from them.

    by Dan Gennoe