Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go

It was written on a note that said: “Wake me up up before you go go” Even after Wham! was successful and famous, Andrew Rigeley still lived with his parents. Him and George Micheal used to make music in Andrew’s room. One day Andrew wanted to wake up early, so he wrote a note for his mother on the door. He wrote “Wake me up up” after he realizing he duplicated up up, he thought wrote “before you go go.”

Andrew didn’t know then that George will make the best out of his note by writing their first American hit titled “Wake me up before you go go” In an interview with George Michael he talked about the development of the song, he said: “I just wanted to make a really energetic pop record that had all the best elements of Fifties and Sixties records, combined with our attitude and our approach, which is obviously more uptempo and a lot younger than some of those records. It’s one of those tracks that gets rid of a lot of your own personal influences; it reminds me of so many different records that I couldn’t actually nail them down. I’d done a demo at home that just had a bass line and a vocal on it. Usually, I write the record in my head; I know what all the parts are going to be and I sing them to all our musicians. And it was great, we actually did it as a rehearsal. We used a Linn drum because the drummer was late, and it was such a good track that we kept it.”

Release Date: May 14, 1984

Songwriter/s: George Michael

Label: Columbia – Epic

Chart Rankings:
UK – 1
US – 1
Germany – 2
In the UK, the song topped the Official Charts Company, the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) certified it Gold for sales over 500.000 copies. In 2015 poll for ITV, it was voted by the British public as the nation’s 13th favorite 1980s number 1. In the US, the song topped the Billboard Hot 100 and the US Cash Box. It peaked at number 4 on the Billboard Adult Contemporary and on the Billboard Hot Dance Club it peaked at number 27. The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) certified it Platinum for sales over 1 million copies. ‘Wake me up” topped the charts in several countries around the world including Australia, Belgium, Canada, Ireland, Netherlands, Norway and Sweden. In Canada it was certified Platinum.

Artist’s age on Release Date: Georgios Kyriacos Panayiotou aka George Michael was 21 years old when this song was released. Wham! was active for 3 years.

Cover Versions: Glee – Pomploamoose – Gene Kelly – Leo Moracchioli – other amateur artists covered this song on Youtube.