This posthumous single for the film Last
Christmas is a downbeat choice to soundtrack a romcom but will appeal to fans hungry to hear the singer’s voice again
Of all the high-profile rock and pop casualties in 2016, George Michael has had the quietest posthumous career. David Bowie and Prince’s deaths led to an unlocking of the vaults and a scouring for unreleased material: the fourth box set of late 1960s Bowie demos in the space of a year will shortly be released; as will a “super-deluxe” version of Prince’s 1999, out this month, that inflates the original double album to 10 discs. But Michael’s estate has largely kept things low-key, releasing only a solitary posthumous single the singer was working on before his death and a version of his 1990 solo album Listen Without Prejudice that includes a live show. Now there’s a new single, This Is How (We Want You to Get High), recorded the year before the singer died. Whether it signals an opening of the floodgates of unreleased
music remains to be seen, but somehow you doubt it.