Praying for time

“George Michael is reportedly worsening after being admitted on Monday to an Austrian hospital for the treatment of pneumonia.”

George Michael wrote some of the best and most enduring pop songs of the 1980s.

For many people, that sentence probably cancels itself out, with the word “pop” diminishing the word “best,” and “the 1980s” diminishing the phrase “most enduring.” But listen without prejudice and, 24 years later, Faith still sounds great. There’s not a bad song on that album.

Volumes have been written about the music of Generation X and they rarely mention chart-topping pop singers, but here is something true for me and for just about everybody my age: I have fond memories of awkwardly pushing someone around the floor of a dimly lit gymnasium to the sound of “One More Try.” For that, and for dozens of other happy memories scored by songs that were inescapable in the late ’80s, I feel like I owe the man.

So maybe we should all be praying for time.