‘As’: The George Michael “career highlight” that his record label refused to release
At the tail end of the 1990s, George Michael faced something of an ultimatum. Presented with an unexpected scandal and years of public scrutiny, he did what only someone like George Michael could do: paraded the spotlight hand-in-hand with his controversial blunders and made a music video about it. ‘Outside’ would be his ammo to confront the situation with a humourous edge, but not before another setback disrupted his plans.
By the time the music video for ‘Outside’ played across music channels on heavy rotation, Michael had reached a point where he was ready to laugh at the situation and urged others to follow suit. Unlike many others who fell into the hands of potentially disgracing scandals, Michael wasn’t one to just roll over and accept defeat. Instead, he used the song and video to reclaim his image on his own terms.
The entire scene that plays out was intended to feel absurd and comical as a way of mirroring Michael’s own feelings towards the entire mishap. The overbearing flashing lights, surveillance cameras, and policemen culminate in a dramatic re-enactment of Michael’s arrest, showing the metaphorical middle finger Michael yearned to deliver to anyone who dismissed his will to demonstrate sexual freedom and liberation.
However, Michael’s newfound embracement of controversy wasn’t without its preceding challenges, as evidenced by a collaboration with Mary J Blige that was shunned by her record label as being too ill-timed ever to make it to US public airwaves. The song, ‘As’, was omitted from the US release of Michael’s compilation album, Ladies & Gentlemen, and held back from being released as a single because the president of Blige’s label, Jay Boberg, refused to give it the green light.
Following Michael’s arrest, Boberg felt the track was too controversial to be associated with Blige and declined any request to give it space on national broadcasting or commercial listening spaces. “It pissed everyone off at Sony,” Kirk Burrowes, who produced Blige’s album Mary, said in 2019. “It pissed George Michael off. It pissed everyone off, but we couldn’t make Jay Boberg bend.”
Michael, too, experienced a hard hit with the refusal, describing it as the “worst consequence” of the entire rollout. “That was the worst consequence about this,” he told USA Today in 1998. “It’s a fantastic duet, a highlight of my career. He told Sony’s lawyer, ‘What’s in it for her? He’s coming off the back of a sex scandal’. Maybe he feared the R&B community’s reaction.”
Despite the situation’s obvious seriousness, Michael also explained that making a video like ‘Outside’ was “what I needed to do”. Michael’s arrest didn’t just appear reckless—it was that, too—but it also alluded to years of speculation and scrutiny about who he was as a person, which included how he identified sexually.
As a result, he knew that cowering away, ignoring the situation, or attempting to minimise it wouldn’t be helpful for anybody, so he paraded his sexuality with confidence, not only to let everybody know he wasn’t going to sit back and be laughed at but in a way that also beckoned others not to be afraid of coming out and being who they truly were.
