When the Other Half of Wham! Tried (and Failed) to Go Solo

In the first four years after Wham!’s split, George Michael had scored four Billboard No. 1s with singles from his debut solo album Faith, been showered with Grammys, BRITs, and MTV VMAs, and generally asserted himself as pop’s great new hero. His former partner-in-crime, on the other hand, appeared to have shunned the music scene for good.

Andrew Ridgeley didn’t entirely disappear from the spotlight following Wham!’s triumphant Wembley Stadium farewell in 1986. He relocated to the millionaire’s paradise of Monaco in a failed bid to forge a career in the world of Formula 3 motor racing. There was also an attempt to crack Hollywood as an actor, which Ridgeley himself would later say “amounted to nothing.” And his natural way with the opposite sex meant he continually graced the tabloids, typically under the moniker “Randy Andy.”

Then, in May 1990, Ridgeley launched a solo career that would put his previously hidden vocal abilities front and center—and recruited several members of Wham!’s camp to help out. Hugh Burns (who played guitar on the pair’s second album Make It Big) and David Austin (who appeared in the monochromatic music video for Wham!’s “The Edge of Heaven”) both served as co-writers, and there were also contributions from regular Wham! bassist Deon Estus and backing vocalist Tessa Niles. There’s even a brief cameo from none other than Michael himself on opener “Red Dress”—but good luck hearing his soulful tones buried beneath the mix.

However, as suggested by his choice of collaborators elsewhere—Nazareth frontman Dan McCafferty, Mr. Big drummer Pat Torpey, The Damned bassist Paul Gray—the former pop idol had also decided to go “rawk.”

When compared to Wham!’s music, “It is a lot more aggressive, a little more raw, a more primal kind of energy,” Ridgeley said at the time. “Certainly that’s what I like in a lot of the music that I listen to.”

Hair Metal Reinvention
Life After Son of Albert

Hair Metal Reinvention

“It felt good,” Ridgeley later wrote in his memoir about the making of his belated solo debut Son of Albert, which came out in May 1990. “The recording process, spread out over a year or so, was rewarding and great fun too, taking place at various studios across London and LA.”

Unfortunately, Son of Albert dealt not in the burgeoning grunge sound that was exploding out of Seattle, nor the hard-living hard rock of the then-dominant Guns N’ Roses. Instead, it pursued the kind of hairspray-drenched glam metal that had already been out of fashion for several years. Def Leppard’s blockbuster Hysteria!, Alice Cooper’s late ’80s comeback album Trash, and the Sunset Strip scene’s most cliched exports appeared to be the reference points for Ridgeley’s record, which was packed with turbo-charged power chords and even more lascivious come-ons: “She smiles and I know what comes next / ’Cos her eyes they’re whispering sex,” he sings in “Kiss Me,” and “Flame” has him declaring, “Ooh I spin when I taste your love upon my skin.”

Across Wham!’s three albums, Ridgeley didn’t take on lead singer duties once, but while he might not have been blessed with Michael’s dulcet tones, the playboy did have a stronger songwriting pedigree. He and Michael co-penned their lead single “Wham! Rap (Enjoy What You Do)” and the summer holiday classic “Club Tropicana,” as well as “Careless Whisper.” Only Son of Albert’s “Shake,” an emphatic blend of industrial beats and squalling guitars that graced the lower end of the Hot 100, comes close to capturing such joys. It didn’t help that two of the album’s 10 numbers are cover versions, either, with both the teenage romance of The Everly Brothers’ “The Price of Love” and Chic’s dancefloor classic “Hangin’ ” given the blustering rock treatment.

The record bombed with critics and the record-buying public alike: While Michael’s sophomore Listen Without Prejudice Vol. 1 came within a whisker of topping the Billboard 200 when it was released in September 1990, Son of Albert peaked no higher than No. 130. It failed to chart at all back in Ridgeley’s homeland.

Entertainment Weekly rated it a C+, calling Ridgeley’s voice “tiny” and noting that “though there is verve in his music … you’ve heard it all a hundred times before. Ridgeley seems to have redefined himself as a kick-in-the-pants rock & roller, but his songs still come out sounding like manufactured pop.” A reviewer in the Esher News and Mail didn’t mince words, saying, “God help us all!! … Confirmation of his total lack of talent and ideas is now proven beyond all doubt with the pitiful excuse for a debut album that is ‘Son of Albert.’ ” But it was a brutal half-star review from Rolling Stone (“On the credibility scale, Andrew Ridgeley falls somewhere between LaToya Jackson and oblivion”) that guaranteed its place in pop infamy once and for all.

Life After Son of Albert

Having finally put his head above the parapet, Ridgeley was understandably left devastated by such a hostile reaction. “It was depressing and disappointing to receive quite such a beating over that album,” he told Hello! magazine in 1997 before appearing to claim its hair metal sound wasn’t intended to have been taken so seriously. “The whole thing had been tongue-in-cheek, and it was misconstrued. But it was perhaps ill-conceived style-wise and in timing on my part.”

The Surrey native still seemed burned by the response decades later. “I personally had a fairly low opinion of record reviewers and the music press anyway,” he told The Independent in 2023. “If they really knew what they were doing, they’d be making the records rather than talking about them.”

Inevitably, CBS Records, which had optioned the solo record clause in Wham!’s contract, decided against giving Ridgeley another shot. And apart from some DIY recordings purely for his own consumption, he’s since given music-making a wide berth. “I don’t think that’s any great loss to anyone,” he acknowledged in the typically British self-deprecating way.

In fact, following an unexpected showing at Michael’s 1991 Rock in Rio performance, Ridgeley appeared to retire from the public eye altogether: According to reports, he even dropped out of a full-blown Wham! reunion for 2005’s Live 8. However, since his former bandmate’s untimely death in 2016, he’s become slightly more visible, appearing in Last Christmas—the festive rom-com named after the hit that’s become even bigger 40 years on—inducting Michael into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and publishing a memoir.

The latter’s warmly nostalgic tone and the spate of charming talk show interviews Ridgeley has conducted since, prove he was one of the Second British Invasion’s good guys. But his misguided solo venture also suggests that some supporting players aren’t necessarily cut out to be leading men.

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