Obviously, [Wham!] made me a lot more comfortable as a musician. I was very confident that I would become a successful musician, but I had no idea I would be a celebrity.

I'm basically a control freak. It's not because I want to be. I'm not at all into the power play that's involved in it.

It does bother me when they [tabloids] drag friends of mine into it and talk about them and lie about them. My friends have no part in it; they're not celebrities, so why should they have to accept the downside of celebrity? That worries me for a bit.

When you shake you ass, they notice fast. And some mistakes were built to last.

Things that I was writing for Wham! were a strong indication of what my future album would be like. But most people got so lost in our image and found it pretty repulsive.

When Andrew [Ridgeley] first met my family, he heard my mom calling me "Yorgos." He just abbreviated it to Yog, and unfortunately it stuck. I hated it is a teenager. It was not the most glamorous-sounding name in the world.

Yet ["One More Try" ] really seemed to connect with people, which is a wonderful thing and a marvelous coincidence.