Praying for Time

Michael wrote, produced and performed it, and it was his first single in almost two years. Released in August 1990, it is a dark reflection on social ills and injustice, and the first song of political motivation he had put out as a single since his earliest days with Wham!. It spent one week at number one on the Billboard Hot 100, his seventh US number one and his last solo single to top that chart, and reached number one in Canada. In the UK it peaked at number six, the only one of the five UK singles from the album to reach the top ten.

Michael Borofsky directed the video, which shows only the lyrics on a blue and black background, with Michael absent. The single had no cover photograph, only words. After Michael moved to Virgin in 1996, Sony remade the video in a simplified computer-generated form, the version released in the 2017 deluxe edition. Rolling Stone's James Hunter called the song a distraught look at the world's wounds. Pitchfork's Alfred Soto heard a despairing vocal drenched in echo, reminiscent of John Lennon in his Plastic Ono Band days.

Michael sang it on the American Idol finale on 21 May 2008, and on the Symphonica Tour of 2011 and 2012 he changed some of the words.