George Michael’s 1996 hit ‘Fast Love’ was, for a long time, one of those songs I’d heard a hundred times without ever truly hearing it. Ostensibly about casual sex — the term ‘hook-up’ wasn’t widely used until the early 00s — Fast Love always struck me as lascivious and not a little bleak (the NME, too, noted “its thrill-stalking emptiness”), underpinned by a sinuous sax line, disco adornments and silky-smooth groove reinforcing its lyrical theme. It was, and remains, a gold-plated pop song.
I remember appreciating how it spoke to parts of the gay experience I’d rarely (up until then) heard articulated in music; namely the desire, joy and thrill of uncomplicated hook-ups. It’s worth remembering that while Michael had been in relationships with men since the early 90s — losing his partner Anselmo Feleppa to complications related to AIDS in 1993, before entering a long-term relationship with Kenny Goss in 1996 — he didn’t come out publicly (and spectacularly) until 1998. But the use of the male pronoun in Fast Love wasn’t lost on me or most people. However, beyond this I don’t remember paying the song much attention at the time.
I wasn’t alone in my surface reading of ‘Fast Love’. Reviews described an “uncomplicated, good-time funky dance track” that stood in “dramatic contrast to the themes of mourning, longing, and introspection that dominate most of the [Older] album.”
While ‘Fast Love’ is absolutely ‘a good-time funky track’, uncomplicated and mourning-free it isn’t. Because buried at the heart of the song sits a twist of separation: “In the absence of security, I made my way into the night; stupid cupid keeps on calling me, and I see loving in his eyes…
I miss my baby”
It’s a heartbreaking denouement that lends the song greater depth and pathos. Everything about this song screams that it’s about hook ups, but in four words we find out that it’s also about longing for someone lost, and seeking comfort — cold or otherwise — when and where you can. The Patrice Rushen sample further reinforces this theme. Rushen’s 1982 hit ‘Forget Me Nots’ — released a full two months before George Michael and Andrew Ridgely would chart with ‘Wham Rap’ — is an airy R&B song about (yep, you’ve guessed it) longing for an ex-lover. Its title, in turn, derives from a flower representing enduring love despite absence or separation. Of course, the sample works on the surface level and blends seamlessly, but in repurposing ‘Forget Me Nots’ and creating additional these layers of meaning, George showed us that thirteen years into his career he was still at the height of his powers.
Hiding in plain sight, then, ‘Fast Love’ is as much about the enduring connections that can last a lifetime — and beyond — as it is about the fleeting ones. Is the song any more affecting knowing that he had lost the love of his life just three years earlier?
I miss my baby.
