Gavin’s real stories of triumphs and tragedies poignantly explain one of pop’s most enigmatic stars.
A comprehensive biography of the massively popular singer and songwriter.
The broad contours of George Michael’s life (1963-2016) in the spotlight are well known to pop-culture fans. In this detailed, evenhanded biography, Gavin, biographer of Chet Baker, Peggy Lee, and Lena Horne, puts those moments into context and offers explanations for Michael’s often confusing actions. As the charismatic, swaggering frontman of Wham! and then the multiplatinum solo superstar behind Faith and its string of hits, Michael seemed unstoppable in the 1980s. “I’m 21 years old and I’m not saying this to brag, but I’ve achieved more as a performer, writer, and producer than anyone else ever has by the same age,” Michael said early in his winning streak. However, in pop culture, the highs rarely last—especially, as Gavin points out, when the star is a closeted man, taunting both competitors and the media. “He had set himself a dangerous trap,” Gavin writes. “He wanted to titillate with sex and keep his secrets untouched.” From there, Michael’s problems only multiplied. The love of his life died from AIDS, his drug addiction intensified and expanded beyond marijuana, and his sexual adventures got him arrested in a public restroom in Los Angeles. To his credit, Gavin handles Michael’s problematic years as equitably as the storybook ones. When the facts are inconclusive, as they are surrounding Michael’s death in 2016, Gavin makes sure to say so: “Had he, in fact, committed suicide? Perhaps not consciously, despite prior efforts. But anyone who remembered Michael’s belief that he had set himself up passive-aggressively to be outed in 1998 had cause to wonder if he had taken steps to set his own death in motion.” Though some of the author’s descriptions of the 1980s music scene are only serviceable, his first-rate reporting makes this biography sing.
Gavin’s real stories of triumphs and tragedies poignantly explain one of pop’s most enigmatic stars.Pub Date: June 28, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-4197-4794-6
Page Count: 528
Publisher: Abrams
Review Posted Online: March 7, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2022
PERSPECTIVES
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.
A noted actor turns to verse: “Poems are a Saturday in the middle of the week.”
McConaughey, author of the gracefully written memoir Greenlights, has been writing poems since his teens, closing with one “written in an Australian bathtub” that reads just as a poem by an 18-year-old (Rimbaud excepted) should read: “Ignorant minds of the fortunate man / Blind of the fate shaping every land.” McConaughey is fearless in his commitment to the rhyme, no matter how slight the result (“Oops, took a quick peek at the sky before I got my glasses, / now I can’t see shit, sure hope this passes”). And, sad to say, the slight is what is most on display throughout, punctuated by some odd koanlike aperçus: “Eating all we can / at the all-we-can-eat buffet, / gives us a 3.8 education / and a 4.2 GPA.” “Never give up your right to do the next right thing. This is how we find our way home.” “Memory never forgets. Even though we do.” The prayer portion of the program is deeply felt, but it’s just as sentimental; only when he writes of life-changing events—a court appearance to file a restraining order against a stalker, his decision to quit smoking weed—do we catch a glimpse of the effortlessly fluent, effortlessly charming McConaughey as exemplified by the David Wooderson (“alright, alright, alright”) of Dazed and Confused. The rest is mostly a soufflé in verse. McConaughey’s heart is very clearly in the right place, but on the whole the book suggests an old saw: Don’t give up your day job.
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9781984862105
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
A blissfully vicarious, heartfelt glimpse into the life of a Manhattan burlesque dancer.
A former New York City dancer reflects on her zesty heyday in the 1970s.
Discovered on a Manhattan street in 2020 and introduced on Stanton’s Humans of New York Instagram page, Johnson, then 76, shares her dynamic history as a “fiercely independent” Black burlesque dancer who used the stage name Tanqueray and became a celebrated fixture in midtown adult theaters. “I was the only black girl making white girl money,” she boasts, telling a vibrant story about sex and struggle in a bygone era. Frank and unapologetic, Johnson vividly captures aspects of her former life as a stage seductress shimmying to blues tracks during 18-minute sets or sewing lingerie for plus-sized dancers. Though her work was far from the Broadway shows she dreamed about, it eventually became all about the nightly hustle to simply survive. Her anecdotes are humorous, heartfelt, and supremely captivating, recounted with the passion of a true survivor and the acerbic wit of a weathered, street-wise New Yorker. She shares stories of growing up in an abusive household in Albany in the 1940s, a teenage pregnancy, and prison time for robbery as nonchalantly as she recalls selling rhinestone G-strings to prostitutes to make them sparkle in the headlights of passing cars. Complemented by an array of revealing personal photographs, the narrative alternates between heartfelt nostalgia about the seedier side of Manhattan’s go-go scene and funny quips about her unconventional stage performances. Encounters with a variety of hardworking dancers, drag queens, and pimps, plus an account of the complexities of a first love with a drug-addled hustler, fill out the memoir with personality and candor. With a narrative assist from Stanton, the result is a consistently titillating and often moving story of human struggle as well as an insider glimpse into the days when Times Square was considered the Big Apple’s gloriously unpolished underbelly. The book also includes Yee’s lush watercolor illustrations.
A blissfully vicarious, heartfelt glimpse into the life of a Manhattan burlesque dancer.Pub Date: July 12, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-250-27827-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2022
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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