It was not until George Michael formed the duo Wham! together with Andrew Ridgeley in 1981 that George Michael was successful. The band's first album, Fantastic scored #1 in the UK and produced a series of top 10 singles including "Wham Rap! (Enjoy What You Do?)" and "Club Tropicana". Their second album, Make It Big, was the breakthrough that made the duo international superstars, scoring #1 on the charts in the US. Singles from that album included "Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go", "Freedom", "Everything She Wants", and "Careless Whisper", the latter of which also became George Michael's first solo effort as a single.
George Michael also sang on the original Band Aid recording of "Do They Know It's Christmas" and donated the profits from "Last Christmas/Everything She Wants" to the charity. In addition, he contributed background vocals to David Cassidy's 1985 hit "The Last Kiss", as well as Elton John's 1985 successes "Nikita" and "Wrap Her Up". In an exclusive foray into popular journalism, in 1985 George Michael also interviewed David Cassidy for David Litchfield's legendary Ritz Newspaper.

Wham!'s tour of China in April 1985, the first visit to China by a Western popular music act, generated enormous worldwide media coverage, much of it centered on George Michael. The tour was documented by celebrated film director Lindsay Anderson and producer Martin Lewis in their film Foreign Skies: Wham! In China and contributed to George Michael's ever-increasing fame.

With the success of George Michael's solo singles, "Careless Whisper" (1984) and "A Different Corner" (1986), rumours of an impending termination of Wham! intensified. The duo officially separated during the summer of 1986 after releasing a farewell single, "The Edge Of Heaven" and a singles compilation, The Final, plus a sell-out concert at Wembley Stadium that included the world premiere of the China film. The Wham! partnership ended officially with the commercially unsuccessful single "Where Did Your Heart Go?", which reached a peak of #50 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 chart in November 1986.


George Michael desired to create music for a more sophisticated audience than the duo's primarily teenage fanbase. The beginning of his solo career, during early 1987, was a duet with soul music icon Aretha Franklin. "I Knew You Were Waiting (For Me)" was a one-off project that helped George Michael achieve an ambition by singing with one of his favourite artists, and it scored number one on both the UK Singles Chart and the Billboard Hot 100 upon its release.

For George Michael, it became his third consecutive solo number-one in the UK from three releases, after 1984's "Careless Whisper" (though the single was actually from the Wham! album "Make It Big") and 1986's "A Different Corner". The single was also the first Michael had recorded as a solo artist which he had not written himself. The co-writer, Simon Climie, was unknown at the time, although he would have success as a performer with the band Climie Fisher in 1988. With this song, George Michael won a Grammy Award during 1988 for Best R&B Performance - Duo or Group with Vocal.

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