POP-A-LOOZA: WHAM!, "Freedom"

Each week, the pop culture website Pop-A-Looza shares some posts from my vast 'n' captivating Boppin' (Like The Hip Folks Do) archives. The latest shared post is a celebration of the 1984-85 hit "Freedom" by Wham!

An infinite number of songs can each be THE greatest record ever made, as long as they take turns. This piece was originally written in 2019 as the inaugural entry in my sporadic series Guilt-Free Pleasures (A Defense Against The Dark Arts), but I have since then tweaked it slightly to make it a chapter in my proposed book The Greatest Record Ever Made! (Volume 1). I didn't change much of it, so reading it here gives you a pretty good glimpse of how it will appear in the book (if the book ever appears).

My boilerplate introduction for Guilt-Free Pleasures (A Defense Against The Dark Arts) sums up my rejection of the silly notion of guilty-pleasure records: There is really no such thing as a guilty pleasure in pop music. Unless you happen to love neo-Nazi ditties or glorifications of hatred or violence, I'd say it's okay for you to dig whatever you wanna dig. Yes, even the hits of The Eagles. Why? BECAUSE THEY'RE POP SONGS! Guilt-Free Pleasures (A Defense Against The Dark Arts) celebrates pop songs. The guilty need not apply. 

I've only gotten around to writing three additional entries in this series, discussing KISS, Milli Vanilli, and "I Never Thought It Peculiar" by The Monkees. The Milli Vanilli piece has also been repurposed as part of a chapter in GREM!, but that chapter will mostly be about an entirely different artist and song. I may eventually do Guilt-Free Pleasures pieces about The Partridge Family and The Archies. The future of the series is uncertain, but I don't think it's done quite yet.

But for today, we turn our attention to a wonderful pop record from the '80s, the pleasure of which is decidedly innocent, not guilty. "Freedom" by Wham! is the subject of the latest Boppin' Pop-A-Looza.

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This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio with Dana & Carl airs Sunday nights from 9 to Midnight Eastern, on the air in Syracuse at SPARK! WSPJ 103.3 and 93.7 FM, and on the web at http://sparksyracuse.org/ You can read about our history here.

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