Although officially released by Wham!, this was George Michael’s first breakaway single. The song explores the guilt felt by George after he cheats on a partner, and his inability to “dance” with them in the same way after this betrayal.

Despite the song’s ubiquity in pop culture since its arrival on the scene in 1985, George Michael has confessed to having no particular connection to the situation this song portrays. He wrote the song to pass the time on a bus, when he was just seventeen. In his 1991 memoir, Bare, Michael admits he regrets that it

was not an integral part of my emotional development… It disappoints me that you can write a lyric very flippantly—and not a particularly good lyric—and it can mean so much to so many people. That’s disillusioning for a writer.

Later in an interview with People magazine, he made similar remarks about the song.

I’m fed up with ‘Careless Whisper.’ I don’t know why it made such an impression. Is it that so many people have cheated? I have no idea. But it’s ironic that I wrote it when I was 17 and didn’t know much about anything. Certainly nothing much about relationships.