Everything She Wants

"Everything She Wants" is a song by British pop duo Wham!, originally released as a single in 1984 on Epic Records on a double A-side with "Last Christmas". It was written and produced by George Michael, a member of the duo, becoming their third consecutive million-selling number-one hit in the United States.

Writing
Like most other Wham! songs from this period, it was written by George Michael. He discussed in the fall 1985 issue of ASCAP in Action: "'It's the only song I've written that successfully came from a backing track first. I wrote the Linn drum pattern and found a synthesizer program I liked and wrote the backing track in one evening, took it back to the hotel, and wrote the vocal in a hotel room the next morning. Because it was thrown together that way, I never looked at it as a single 'til everybody started saying it was great.'" Michael elaborated on the song's lyrics and the meaning behind them in Dick Clark's Countdown radio show: "'It's a lyric about a man who is six or eight months into a marriage which obviously isn't going well. He's faced with the 'happy' news of an arriving baby. So he's in that situation where he can't back out. [The song] talks about the situation [in which] many men find themselves, working really hard to support a family… and see it as a kind of trap. It's a situation I've seen. It's not the kind of thing I usually write about. Our lyrics are usually a lot closer to the kind of pop lightweight lyric we enjoy, but it's a departure, and I think it worked.'"

Recording
"Everything She Wants" was recorded in August 1984 at Marcadet Studios in Paris using a 3M 32-track recorder and was most likely finished off at Sarm West’s Studio 2 in London after most of Make It Big had been finished at Studio Miraval in southeastern France over a period of six weeks. The song was based around a mono 2-bar LinnDrum loop, originally intended as a guide but it was eventually kept on the finished record. Despite being credited as a Wham! track, it's also a departure in the sense that Michael recorded the track entirely by himself (with engineer Chris Porter in attendance), as opposed to the typical process of involving session musicians and Michael conveying his ideas to them. Apparently, the musicians involved in Make It Big had already flown back to the UK when Michael came around to recording the track en route from Studio Miraval, so it was partly out of necessity he worked on it himself. According to Porter, "I think this was when George started to realise that if he wanted to, he could do everything himself. He could cut out all these other people and their ideas." This would pave way for "Last Christmas", which followed the same approach.

Michael confirms: "'For the most part I try and play everything [when writing and recording, but] it wasn't the case in Wham! Apart from [that] 'Last Christmas' and 'Everything She Wants' are all me.'"

He added that both songs were all made on one synthesizer, referring to a Roland Juno-60.

History
Upon release, "Last Christmas" took the majority of the attention and airplay as it was appropriate in early December as Christmas approached. However, the presence of an equally-billed flip side meant that radio stations had something else to play once "Last Christmas" had lost its seasonal topicality.

The presence of the Band Aid project meant that the double A-side peaked at number two in the UK Singles Chart, although in the process it became the biggest-selling record not to get to number one. However, in the USA, the song did reach number one on the Billboard Hot 100, and became the third number-one song in a row from 1984's Make It Big album.

Wham! had two more number-one hits in the UK before splitting at their height in 1986.

Cash Box said that the song is a "probing R&B cut" that is "perfect dance floor material".

Although Michael bemoaned much of Wham!'s material as he began his solo career, "Everything She Wants" remained a song of which he was proud, and he continued to perform it in his shows. Furthermore, Michael remarked in an interview (to promote 25 Live tour) that "Everything She Wants" was his favourite Wham! song.

In 1996, the song was performed at the MTV Unplugged concert.

In 1997, the song was remixed and re-released as "Everything She Wants '97" for the greatest hits album The Best of Wham!: If You Were There....

In September 2011 during the Symphonica Tour, at a concert at SAP Arena, Mannheim, Germany, Michael said that "Understand" featured on Twenty Five was written as a follow-up to "Everything She Wants" with the man in the song realizing that his woman cared a lot more about love than he ever dreamed of.

"Everything She Wants" was featured on the official soundtrack album to Last Christmas released by Sony Music on CD, 2-disc vinyl, and digital formats on 8 November 2019. The song was also featured in the 2013 video game Grand Theft Auto V on the in-game radio station Non-Stop Pop FM.

Other versions
Rapper Foxy Brown sampled the song on the track "I Can't" from her 1999 album Chyna Doll.

The a cappella group Naturally 7 sampled "Everything She Wants" on their 2011 song "Life Goes On", an arrangement that was personally approved by Michael.

In 2020, Alien Ant Farm recorded a rock remake the song. Its music video, shot during the COVID-19 pandemic, features cameos from artists like Insane Clown Posse, Hyro the Hero, Charlie Benante of Anthrax, CJ Pierce of Drowning Pool, and several others.

Music video
The official music video for the song was directed by Andy Morahan, and is footage of a live performance in black and white.

Personnel

 * George Michael - lead and backing vocals, Roland Juno-60 synthesizer, LinnDrum programming
 * Andrew Ridgeley - guitar synthesizer, backing vocals

Track listing

 * Also released in a limited edition with a 1985 calendar (WQTA 4949)


 * Note: Track 1 plays 7" remix but is labelled only as "Remix"