Praying for time
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Praying for Time is a 1990 song by George Michael that was written and produced by him . It appeared on the album Listen Without Prejudice Vol. 1 .
history
The dark and gloomy reflection of the social grievances and injustice in the song found a lot of positive feedback from critics. Rolling Stone's James Hunter described the song as a perturbed look at the world's astonishing wonder. From his point of view, Michael positions the healing passage of time as a balm for psychological and emotional hunger, poverty and hatred. Since joining Wham! this is Michael's first politically motivated song.
It was released on August 13, 1990, in the United States (and its last there) and Canada, the pop song became a number one hit. After almost two years it became his first single in the 1990s . In October 2017, 140,000 copies of the single were sold in the UK.
Music video
Since George Michael refused to appear in the music video for advertising purposes, an alternative video clip was created under the direction of Michael Borofsky. You can only see the lyrics of the song on a blue and black background and at the end you can see the album cover. Some words and texts are slightly animated:
- The lines: "The rich declare themselves poor" (German: The rich declare themselves poor) and "And the wounded skies above" (German: And the wounded sky above) look like shimmering water.
- The lines "I guess somewhere along the way" (German: I think somewhere on the way), "He must have let us out to play" (German: He must have let us out) and at the beginning of the second verse "These are the days of the empty hand "(German: These are the days of the empty hand) unfold on the picture as if written on a tape.
- The individual words that make up the line "'cause God's stopped keeping score" appear one after the other in sync with the song.
- In the second chorus, the words "love", "hate" and "hope" (German: Liebe, Hass and Hope) bleach the lines "It's hard to love" (German: It's hard to love), "There's so much to hate "(German: There's so much to hate) and" Hanging on to hope "(German: To hold on to hope) can be found a few moments later after they were shown.
- The two occurrences in the line "when there is no hope to speak of" (German: When there is no more hope to speak of), one in each choir, show different treatments of the word hope. In the first chorus the line appears without the word hope, which flashes briefly in the picture when it is sung, and in the second chorus the line appears without the word, but replaced by a dash (it looks something like this: "when there is no ____ to speak of "). The same applies to the line "This is the year of the guilty man" (German: This is the year of the guilty man), there the word "Guilty" (German: Schuldig) only flashes when singing.
The full video without George Michael enjoyed weeks of popularity on MTV and a high rotation rate. The single also only contained words and no picture on the cover picture. Speculation after inspiration from the Prince song Sign "☮" the Times , which appeared three years earlier, was circulating.
After Michael's move to Virgin Records in 1996, Sony Music Entertainment released an altered version of the video with a uniformed black and gray background, which is the most seen today and can be found on the Deluxe Edition of the Listen Without Prejudice Vol. 1 album .
Cover versions
- 1998: Royal Philharmonic Orchestra
- 2008: Carrie Underwood
Individual evidence
- ↑ Chart placements: chartsurfer.de . Retrieved June 27, 2018.
- ↑ Listen Without Prejudice Vol. 1 .
- ↑ Remembering George Michael's Listen Without Prejudice Vol. 1 . In: Official Charts Company . October 13, 2017. Archived from the original on October 25, 2017. Retrieved October 25, 2017.
- ↑ Changed music video on Youtube.com