Wham! - Make it Big (1984) [EAC-FLAC] [RePoPo]

******************************************************************************* Wham! - Make it Big ******************************************************************************* Wham! - Make It Big 01. Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go 03:50 02. Everything She Wants 05:02 03. Heartbeat 04:44 04. Like A Baby 04:13 05. Freedom 05:00 06. If You Were There 03:37 07. Credit Card Baby 05:08 08. Careless Whisper 06:33 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Review by Stephen Thomas Erlewine The title was a promise to themselves, Wham!'s assurance that they would make it big after struggling out of the gates the first time out. They succeeded on a grander scale than they ever could have imagined, conquering the world and elsewhere with this effervescent set of giddy new wave pop-soul, thereby making George Michael a superstar and consigning Andrew Ridgeley to the confines of Trivial Pursuit. It was so big and the singles were so strong that it's easy to overlook its patchwork qualities. It's no longer than eight tracks, short even for the pre-CD era, and while the four singles are strong, the rest is filler, including an Isley Brothers cover. Thankfully, it's the kind of filler that's so tied to its time that it's fascinating in its stilted post-disco dance-pop rhythms and Thatcher/Reagan materialism — an era that encouraged songs called "Credit Card Baby." If this dichotomy between the A-sides and B-sides is far too great to make this essential, the way Faith later would be, those A-sides range from good to terrific. "Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go" is absolute silliness whose very stupidity is its strength, and if "Everything She Wants" is merely agreeable bubblegum, "Freedom" is astounding, a sparkling Motown rip-off rippling with spirit and a timeless melody later ripped off by Noel Gallagher. Then, there's the concluding "Careless Whisper," a soulful slow one where Michael regrets a one-night stand over a richly seductive background and a yearning saxophone. It was an instant classic, and it was the first indication of George Michael's strengths as a pop craftsman — which means it points the way to Faith, not the halfhearted Edge of Heaven. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- WAKE ME UP BEFORE YOU GO-GO Song Review by Steve Huey The almost blindingly bright, soul-tinged pop confection "Wake Me up Before You Go-Go" gave the British duo Wham! their first number one single in 1985, establishing George Michael and Andrew Ridgeley as the premier bubblegum teen idol act of the mid-'80s. It was also the first clear evidence of Michael's seemingly effortless mastery of the pop song form, a facility he would demonstrate time and time again over the next decade. "Wake Me up Before You Go -Go" is relentlessly perky, but to dismiss it as mere fluff is to overlook a tremendous guilty pleasure. The song is tightly and impeccably constructed, and its inescapable melody and bouncy beat are almost a force of nature, so difficult are they to resist. Moreover, the song's individual elements are the work of a fully formed pop craftsman -- from the way the keyboards and bass interact and leave room for each other to breathe, to the playful bass voice chanting "jitterbug" at regular intervals, to Michael's accentuation of the arrangement by adding (and subtracting) a lightly swinging horn section and soulful backing choir. It often takes some time for the big-picture status of bubblegum pop tunes to become clear -- at least until the initial backlash against their ubiquitous popularity wears off -- but in retrospect, it's clear that "Wake Me up Before You Go-Go" is one of the decade's true mainstream pop classics, which is why it's become a staple of '80s retro play lists, as well as the song most listeners immediately identify with Wham! ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- EVERYTHING SHE WANTS Song Review by Amy Hanson Although ”Everything She Wants” was relegated to b-side status on Wham!’s 1984 Christmas single, the song had flipped the tables by the beginning of the year, as a remixed version became the club hit. It encountered nary a whiff of resistance as it stomped up the US charts, too, following both ”Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go” and ”Careless Whisper” with the band’s third #1 hit the following March. Another glimpse of R&B driven, synth swept dance grooves, ” Everything She Wants” brought in elements of classic blue-eyed soul, yet kept the blast purely in step with the most popular themes of the mid 1980s. Proof again that, in spite of the snide sideways glances from their own countrymen, Wham! were able masters of an era they ruled for a solid year, delivering hit after hit with ease. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- FREEDOM Song Review by Amy Hanson The second song from Make it Big to reach #1 in the UK, the song fared slightly worse in the U.S., resting at a paltry #3 when it followed a string of chart toppers in early 1985. Light and most certainly of its era, this story of love and loss and love’s rebirth saw Michael pull out all the stops. Continuing his penchant for purer pop, the vocalist once again left out the pointed political and social barbs of his earlier efforts, favoring innocuous patter that was then swept aside by the music. Here, Michael’s multi-tracked vocals and Ridgeley’s guitar are awash with elements of 60’s girl group pop, Queen-ish turns and piano riffing rolls. Lush, luxurious and feel-good all the way, ”Freedom” swept the band, and their fans into the stratosphere for one more romp. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Song Review by Amy Hanson The closing set piece of the duo’s second album, ”Careless Whisper” was one of the few songs penned by both George Michael and Andrew Ridgeley. But, with Michael already thinking of a solo career, and with the band’s US label savvy enough to realize that the charismatic singer was going to stay in the public eye, the single was credited to Wham! featuring George Michael in America, and as a full-on Michael solo single in the UK. To fans, however, such distinctions were merely far-flung annoyances. All that mattered was getting this single, this album, this band as close to the bone as possible. Built around a simmering Latin-lite tempo, sultry sax and Michael’s own impassioned delivery, ”Careless Whisper” touched fans and passive listeners alike to become one of, if not the only, love songs of 1985. Clocking in at over six minutes, it was perfect for dance floor canoodling, and topped the charts on both sides of the Atlantic. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Exact Audio Copy V0.99 prebeta 4 from 23. January 2008 EAC extraction logfile from 13. April 2009, 23:44 Wham! / Make It Big Used drive : HL-DT-STDVD-RAM GSA-H55N Adapter: 3 ID: 1 Read mode : Secure Utilize accurate stream : Yes Defeat audio cache : No Make use of C2 pointers : No Read offset correction : 102 Overread into Lead-In and Lead-Out : No Fill up missing offset samples with silence : Yes Delete leading and trailing silent blocks : No Null samples used in CRC calculations : No Used interface : Native Win32 interface for Win NT & 2000 Gap handling : Not detected, thus appended to previous track Used output format : User Defined Encoder Selected bitrate : 1024 kBit/s Quality : High Add ID3 tag : Yes Command line compressor : F:Archivos de programaExact Audio CopyFLACFLAC.EXE Additional command line options : -6 -V -T "ARTIST=%a" -T "TITLE=%t" -T "ALBUM=%g" -T "DATE=%y" -T "TRACKNUMBER=%n" -T "GENRE=%m" -T "COMMENT=%e" %s -o %d TOC of the extracted CD Track | Start | Length | Start sector | End sector --------------------------------------------------------- 1 | 0:00.00 | 3:50.52 | 0 | 17301 2 | 3:50.52 | 5:02.28 | 17302 | 39979 3 | 8:53.05 | 4:44.15 | 39980 | 61294 4 | 13:37.20 | 4:13.42 | 61295 | 80311 5 | 17:50.62 | 5:00.53 | 80312 | 102864 6 | 22:51.40 | 3:37.32 | 102865 | 119171 7 | 26:28.72 | 5:08.05 | 119172 | 142276 8 | 31:37.02 | 6:33.73 | 142277 | 171824 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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