Older Michael

Older is the third studio album by English singer-songwriter George Michael, released on 13 May 1996 in Europe by Virgin Records and Aegean Records one day later in the United States. The American release was the first album released by DreamWorks Records. It was Michael's first studio album since 1990's Listen Without Prejudice Vol. 1 – the five-and-a-half-year gap was due to the legal battle that Michael experienced with his former record company Sony Music. Michael dedicated three years to the recording of Older, and the album found him exploring new musical territories in a more serious fashion compared to his previous work. At the time of release, the album was a huge commercial hit, particularly in Europe, but was received in America with lukewarm commercial approval. In the UK, the album was particularly notable for producing a record six top three hit singles in a two-year span.

Older is the third studio album by English singer-songwriter George Michael, released on 13 May 1996 in Europe by Virgin Records and Aegean Records one day later in the United States. The American release was the first album released by DreamWorks Records. It was Michael's first studio album since 1990's Listen Without Prejudice Vol. 1 – the five-and-a-half-year gap was due to the legal battle that Michael experienced with his former record company Sony Music. Michael dedicated three years to the recording of Older, and the album found him exploring new musical territories in a more serious fashion compared to his previous work. At the time of release, the album was a huge commercial hit, particularly in Europe, but was received in America with lukewarm commercial approval. In the UK, the album was particularly notable for producing a record six top three hit singles in a two-year span.

George Michael (born Georgios Kyriacos Panayiotou; 25 June 1963 – 25 December 2016) was an English singer, songwriter, record producer, and philanthropist who rose to fame as a member of the music duo Wham! and later embarked on a solo career. At the time of his death, Michael had sold over 115 million records worldwide, making him one of the best-selling music artists of all time. He achieved seven number-one songs on the UK Singles Chart and eight number-one songs on the US Billboard Hot 100. Michael won various music awards, including two Grammy Awards, three Brit Awards, three American Music Awards, 12 Billboard Music Awards, four MTV Video Music Awards, and six Ivor Novello Awards. In 2008, he was ranked 40th on Billboard's list of the Greatest Hot 100 Artists of All Time.

Although it took more than a year of concerts and promotional appearances, Michael Bublé's 2003 debut disc of swinging pop standards finally ascended the Billboard album chart and landed at number 47. That peak may not seem impressive at first, but in a musical world dominated by rap or the latest flavor of alternative rock, Bublé's upper chart appearance was a real accomplishment and it sparked a renewed interest in music associated with great vocalists like Frank Sinatra. With his second studio disc, It's Time, Bublé builds upon the musical foundation he laid with his debut and demonstrates that he is much more than a flavor-of-the-month celebrity. Like his debut, It's Time mines the rich history of pop music as Bublé applies his own technique to classic standards and incorporates his Rat Pack sound into modern pop songs.

"When the ci-hitty gets into a bu-hoys sy-hist-em, he loses his a-hankerin' for the cou-huntry." So intones W.C. Fields in his Yukon-based Victorian absurdist two-reeler The Fatal Glass of Beer (1933). However, if the city you lived in was Salzburg, Austria, the idea of "a-hankerin' for the cou-huntry" was a popular one, and Salzburg's court composer Johann Michael Haydn paid tribute to it through these two little "Abbey operettas" written not for a civic theater, but for the theater at the Benedictine University in Salzburg. Haydn's singspiel Die Hochzeit auf der Alm (The Wedding on the Alpine Pasture, 1763) was intended as a mere opener to Salzburg scribbler Florian Reichssiegel's ponderous five-act Latin tragedy Pietas conjugalis in Sigismundo et Maria; however, it was the singspiel that won the day.