George Michael's last concert: Earls Court, London, October 17, 2012

About the artist

George Michael was born Georgios Kyriacos Panayiotou in London on June 25, 1963.^[1] He met Andrew Ridgeley at school in 1975, and in 1981 the two formed Wham!,^[2][3] whose run of hits, among them "Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go" and "Last Christmas,"^[4] ended with their farewell show at Wembley Stadium on June 28, 1986.^[5] Wham! played Japan once, in 1985.^[6]

He was already releasing records under his own name. "Careless Whisper" entered the UK chart on August 4, 1984, and spent three weeks at No. 1;^[7] "A Different Corner" also reached No. 1 in 1986.^[8] His first solo album, Faith, entered the UK albums chart at No. 1 on November 14, 1987, and stayed in the Top 100 for 93 weeks.^[9] Its title track spent four weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, and the album won Album of the Year at the 31st Grammy Awards.^[10] The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame singles out "Praying for Time" from Listen Without Prejudice Vol. 1 (1990), "Freedom! '90" and "Jesus to a Child" (1996) among the records that followed.^[11]

The 25 Live tour, which by August 2008 had been on the road for nearly two years, was his first in 15 years.^[12] Across a 49-date arena tour and a 30-date stadium tour it played to more than two million people, about 350,000 of them in London, and in June 2007 he gave the first concert at the rebuilt Wembley Stadium;^[13] Billboard reported that both 70,000-capacity shows sold out and that he sang "The Edge of Heaven" there for the first time since Wham!'s farewell 21 years earlier.^[5] By 2009 his label put his worldwide record sales at more than 100 million.^[13]

Why this was the last show

Earls Court was a place where he had said goodbye once before. On August 24, 2008, as 25 Live played its final London dates there, he thanked the crowd for 25 years of support and made it clear, UPI reported, that he was finished with big tours. He also let slip that he had written a Christmas song and hinted that he was not done with singing altogether; he was said to want a quieter life, away from the bells and whistles of arena touring.^[12] The shows of August 24 and 25 were filmed and released in December 2009 as his first live DVD, Live in London.^[13]

Three years later he came back in a different form. Symphonica: The Orchestral Tour put an orchestra alongside his band. It opened in Prague on August 22, 2011, with the Czech National Symphony Orchestra, and was booked to travel through Germany, Spain, Italy, France and other European countries.^[14] According to Rolling Stone, the set leaned on covers: no "Faith," "Careless Whisper" or "Monkey," but the Police's "Roxanne," New Order's "True Faith" and "My Baby Just Cares for Me" every night.^[15]

In November 2011 the tour stopped in Vienna. He contracted pneumonia and was treated in hospital there; his doctors said he could not perform the rest of the tour, the remaining European dates were postponed, and his team said all of them would be rescheduled.^[16] He left hospital on December 22 and flew home, and the next day he spoke to reporters outside his London house. He thanked the doctors and nurses in Vienna, said he was determined to play the postponed dates, and said he wanted to give an extra show for the Austrian doctors who had saved his life.^[17]

The new dates were announced on March 21, 2012. The British leg would open in Birmingham on September 16 and end with three nights at Earls Court on October 13, 14 and 17. For the Vienna show on September 4, he donated 1,000 tickets to the medical staff who had treated him.^[18]

That summer he sang "Freedom! '90" and a new song, "White Light," at the closing ceremony of the London Olympics on August 12.^[19] His spokesperson described "White Light," written after the pneumonia, as a celebration of being alive.^[20] The tour resumed in Vienna in September^[21] and reached Britain at the LG Arena in Birmingham on September 16, where, in front of a sold-out crowd, he shouted that he was back and joked, as he danced, that he might be 70 but he could still do it.^[22] That month he also became the first contemporary pop artist to play the Palais Garnier opera house in Paris.^[23] The press quotes his promoter, Marshall Arts, gathered from the British dates included the Sunday Times calling one show an almost note-perfect display of pop professionalism and the Glasgow Herald finding him in top vocal form.^[21]

But the road ahead was getting shorter. At the end of September he called off nine Australian dates planned for November and December, in Perth, Adelaide, Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and the Hunter Valley. Cancelling broke his heart, he said; he had underestimated how difficult the year would be. He would finish the British dates in October and then take time off to recover.^[24] Marshall Arts said he was skipping Australia on his doctors' advice, and that the tour would end at Earls Court on Wednesday, October 17, after 65 shows in opera houses and arenas across Europe.^[21]

So October 17 arrived as the last night of a tour, not as a farewell to the stage. American Songwriter writes that he meant to take a few years off,^[25] and Smooth Radio describes the run as his final concerts before stepping out of the spotlight for the next few years.^[26] He never came back to it. He died at his home in Goring-on-Thames, Oxfordshire, on December 25, 2016, aged 53.^[4] In March 2017 the senior coroner for Oxfordshire announced that he had died of natural causes, from heart and liver disease.^[27]

What is known about the day

Earls Court was an exhibition hall on Warwick Road in west London, opened in 1937,^[28] that had hosted concerts and trade shows as well as twelve Brit Awards ceremonies.^[29] The three October nights replaced dates originally set for December 2011, and the old tickets were still valid. Time Out's listing promised reworked versions of his hits, with a full orchestra, plus a few covers; seats cost £51 to £91.^[30] October 17 was a Wednesday, the night that would close a run of 65 shows across Europe,^[21] and the last of the three Earls Court nights.^[26]

He opened with "Through." According to American Songwriter, the evening ran to 20 songs counting the medleys, among them "My Baby Just Cares for Me," "Kissing a Fool," "Father Figure" and "You Have Been Loved," along with covers of songs associated with Johnny Mathis and Bing Crosby.^[25] A review of the first British show, in Birmingham, describes the staging: a large screen behind the orchestra and band, showing short films.^[22] Rolling Stone noted that the set was mostly covers, and that the songs in the encore were some of the only originals he played all night.^[15]

When he came back for the encore, he went from "Amazing" into "I'm Your Man," a Wham! song, and then "Freedom! '90," as one medley.^[15][26] At one point, Smooth Radio reports, he told the crowd that London had made the last night perfect.^[26]

The last song was "I Remember You," written by Victor Schertzinger and Johnny Mercer in 1941 and later recorded by Doris Day and Kenny Rogers, among others. Rolling Stone called it the last thing he ever sang in public.^[15] iHeartRadio likewise identifies the song, which followed the medley, as the likely closer of his final show.^[31]

When it was over he waved and said, "Thank you London, we love you – see you soon." Smooth Radio and American Songwriter both report those as his last words on stage.^[26][25]

A fan in the audience filmed most of the encore on a phone.^[15] According to Smooth Radio, that clip became the last footage of George Michael performing on stage.^[26]

What the show left behind

The tour became a record a year and a half later. Symphonica, released in March 2014, was a live album recorded on the 2011–12 tour and co-produced by George Michael and Phil Ramone.^[32][23] Ramone, who had also produced Songs from the Last Century with him in 1999, died in March 2013 at 79, and Symphonica was his final project.^[23] The album gathers songs from the tour, among them "Through," "My Baby Just Cares for Me," "A Different Corner," "Praying for Time" and "Feeling Good," with "I Remember You" added as a bonus track for digital pre-orders.^[23] It topped the UK albums chart announced on March 23, beating Kylie Minogue's new album by more than 20,000 copies; it was his seventh UK No. 1 album and his first new album in nearly ten years.^[32] Whether it contains anything recorded on October 17 has not been confirmed.

Earls Court itself lasted only two more years. Its final event was a Bombay Bicycle Club concert, with David Gilmour as a guest, on December 13, 2014,^[29] and the building was then demolished.^[28] Pink Floyd had played there on their Division Bell tour in 1994.^[29]

After his death on December 25, 2016, his music was remembered in many settings. At the Brit Awards in February 2017, Andrew Ridgeley and Pepsi and Shirlie, who had sung with Wham!, paid tribute to him, Shirlie saying he had been like a brother to her. Chris Martin of Coldplay then sang "A Different Corner," and halfway through, archive footage of George Michael singing it appeared on screen so the two voices ran together.^[33]

On October 16, 2017, Channel 4 in Britain broadcast George Michael: Freedom, a documentary he co-directed with David Austin and narrated himself. He had worked on the film until Christmas 2016, and his label called it his final work. In it, Elton John calls Listen Without Prejudice Vol. 1 his masterpiece. On October 20 that album was reissued with his MTV Unplugged performance, recorded in London on October 11, 1996, and a reworked "Fantasy" featuring Nile Rodgers went to radio.^[34]

In 2023 he was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, with Ridgeley as his presenter. The Hall's page quotes a 2024 essay in which Elton John calls him one of the best vocalists ever, and lists Adele, Sam Smith, Ed Sheeran and Bruno Mars among the artists he influenced.^[11]

In September 2026 came the announcement of The Faith Tour, a live album from his first solo tour, recorded in 1988 at the Palais Omnisports de Paris-Bercy and due on November 6, along with a film of the same concert to be shown in cinemas worldwide later in 2026. The album draws on 18 previously unreleased recordings from a tour that played 109 concerts in 16 countries.^[35] As his first solo tour finally reaches the screen, there is still, as of November 2026, no official film of the last night of his last tour.

At the venue where he had stepped back from big tours in 2008, he closed a tour once more, four years later, with an orchestra behind him. Since his death, Smooth Radio and American Songwriter have returned again and again to that fan's footage of the encore and his parting promise to see London soon.^[26][25]