"Freedom! '90" (also known simply as "Freedom!") is a song written, produced, and performed by British singer-songwriter George Michael, and released on Columbia Records in October 1990. The "'90" added to the end of the title is to prevent confusion with a hit by Michael's former band Wham!, also entitled "Freedom". The song's backing beat is a sample from James Brown's song "Funky Drummer".
It was the third single taken from Listen Without Prejudice Vol. 1 (1990), though released as the second single from the album in the US and Australia. "Freedom! '90" was one of a few uptempo songs on this album. It was a major hit and peaked at No. 8 on the US Billboard Hot 100. The song refers to Michael's past success with Wham!, yet also shows a new side of himself as a new man, who is more cynical about the music business than he had been before.
Michael refused to appear in the music video for the song and cast a group of supermodels to appear instead. It went into heavy rotation on MTV and was remastered for the 2017 documentary, George Michael: Freedom. On 30 October 2020 it premiered on YouTube in 4K for its 30th anniversary. Michael performed this song, alongside his 2012 single "White Light", during the closing ceremony of the 2012 London Olympics. Rolling Stone placed "Freedom! '90" at number 126 in their list of "500 Best Songs of All Time" in 2021. Billboard ranked it number 39 in their "500 Best Pop Songs of All Time" in 2023.
Chart performance
"Freedom! '90" was 6:30 long, but a shorter version was made available for radio consumption. The radio edit was made by removing the upbeat in several portions of the song and cutting straight to the downbeat. The addition of the year to the title was to distinguish the song from "Freedom", a number one hit in the UK for Wham! in 1984 (number 3 in the US in 1985). It was the second US single from the album Listen Without Prejudice Vol. 1, and had contrasting fortunes on each side of the Atlantic—it peaked at number 28 on the UK Singles Chart, but was a major success on the US Billboard Hot 100, reaching number 8 and selling over 500,000 copies to earn a Gold certification from the RIAA. It remained in the Billboard top 40 for 12 weeks in late 1990 and early 1991. In Canada, Michael achieved another chart-topper. As of October 2017, the single sold 83,000 copies in UK.
Music video
By 1990, Michael had become weary of the pressures of fame, telling the Los Angeles Times, "At some point in your career, the situation between yourself and the camera reverses. For a certain number of years, you court it and you need it, but ultimately, it needs you more and it's a bit like a relationship. The minute that happens, it turns you off ... and it does feel like it is taking something from you." Accordingly, he decided not to appear in photo shoots and music videos, saying, "I would like to never step in front of a camera again."
Although he later relented and decided to film a video for his new song, he still refused to appear in it. Instead, inspired by Peter Lindbergh's now-iconic portrait of Naomi Campbell, Linda Evangelista, Tatjana Patitz, Christy Turlington, and Cindy Crawford for the January 1990 cover of the British edition of Vogue, Michael asked the five models to appear in the video. While models appearing in music videos was then commonplace, they usually played the singer's love interest, as with Christie Brinkley's appearance Billy Joel's "Uptown Girl" video, or Turlington's appearance in Duran Duran's "Notorious" video. For "Freedom! '90", the five models, rather than portraying his on-screen girlfriends, would lip sync the song in Michael's place. The video also included male models John Pearson, Scott Benoit, Peter Formby, Todo Segalla, and fashion photographer Mario Sorrenti.
Evangelista took some persuading before agreeing to appear in the video, saying, "He thought it would make us into a big deal, that it would be good for us. I was like, 'Please, we're here. We've already arrived!'" After speaking with Michael, she was convinced, and rearranged her schedule. In a 2015 Vanity Fair article, Evangelista reflected on her decision positively, saying, "Little did I know that to this day, when someone meets me for the first time, they bring up that video. That's what they remember. So yeah, George was right." An initial disagreement over their salaries was resolved when Annie Veltri, who represented Crawford, Evangelista, Campbell, and Patitz at Elite Model Management, clarified that all of her clients would be compensated equally, at $15,000 a day.