Amazing - Single

“I first became aware of George Michael when I was about four years old,” Jake Shears tells Apple Music. “Wham! was out in full force with ‘Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go,’ [which] was on MTV. I remember my older sisters watching it. And they were everywhere. Their faces were everywhere. You were seeing them on T-shirts at malls and on people. And I just remember thinking that I loved his voice and that he was a very handsome man.”

It wasn’t just Michael’s voice that inspired Shears when he began making music with Scissor Sisters at the turn of the century—it was his spirit, too. “I remember feeling really influenced and inspired by ‘Wham Rap! (Enjoy What You Do?)’ when I was making that early Scissors stuff,” says Shears. “I felt like it gave me a license to have fun with music that we were making and allow myself to get a little bit goofy with the writing. There’s a joy to it that I plugged into and identified with.”

That sense of fun and adventure comes through on Shears’ cover of “Amazing.” Taken from the 2004 album Patience, it was originally a glossy pop-rock ode to Michael’s then-partner Kenny Goss. Here, Shears guides it further toward the dance floor via club-ready beats, shades of disco, and the whirr of acid-house basslines. “There’s so many George Michael stylings that I use in my own voice,” he says. “And so, it was fun to sing this song. Also, it just made me realize, singing it, how much of an influence he has been to me. It’s an honor to get to do it, and I really hope that he’s out there somewhere digging it.”