Faith

It took more than a year to make. The first songs, I Want Your Sex (Part 1) and Look at Your Hands, were recorded at Sarm West Studios in London in August and September 1986. After a quiet half year, work began properly in February 1987 at Puk Studios near Randers, Denmark, where each instrument was overdubbed rather than played by a live rhythm section, as it had been on Wham!'s Make It Big. Michael played much or all of the parts himself on I Want Your Sex (Part 1), Hard Day and Monkey. The Puk sessions ended in early June, shortly after the title track was recorded, because Michael had cabin fever, according to engineer Chris Porter, and the later stages moved to Sarm West Studio 2.

The title track opens with an organ fanfare that is the music of Wham!'s Freedom played as if in a cathedral. Father Figure began as a dance production until Michael took out the snare drums and kept it as a mid-tempo ballad. One More Try is a soul song in the tradition of Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder. I Want Your Sex runs to three parts, and the third, A Last Request, closes the album.

Reception

Faith reached number one in the UK, for a single week, and in the US, where it spent 12 weeks on top and 51 non-consecutive weeks in the top ten. It was the first album by a white solo artist to reach number one on Billboard's Top Black Albums chart, and Michael told Jet in 1988 that he was much happier with that than with topping the pop chart. It won Album of the Year at the 1989 Grammys, was certified Diamond in the US in 1996, and ranked 151 on Rolling Stone's 2020 list of the 500 greatest albums. Rolling Stone's Mark Coleman said Michael had emerged as "one of pop music's leading artisans". A remastered edition came out in January 2011.