They rly don’t make ’em like this any more. Boy bands singing about unemployment? Mentions of governmental departments in choruses? Comedy rapping? OK, there’s still comedy rapping.
My “best of wham!”, which features the 12″ mix of wham rap (all 6:46 of it!), credits the song to michael and ridgeley, I’d kind of always assumed it was written for them, otherwise why is the george michael “character” so very far from the different corner/careless whisper big girls blouse GM we grew to love (and which was clearly much more commercially successful)? In terms of early 80s english rap singles, it’s probably the best though (not that there was a lot of competition). It does kind of capture the Chic groove that eg rappers delight has, and is arguably no more lyrically niave, why shouldn’t essex boys do rap? I think it works because they’re singing about what they know, what three million people knew at the time (although I doubt whether dole money stretched to buying singles, which might explain why this was their lowest charting proper single). Interesting that the lyrics on the 12″ version include the wonderful line “i choose to cruise”, but this is excised from the single version, Tom Watkins’ idea not to raise suspicions perhaps?