George Michael wanted to disappear behind other voices

In July 1992 the most famous singer in the world was at work in Dave Stewart’s Chapel Studios in Encino, and the plan was for him not to sing. The project was called The Voice of Reason by the Trojan Souls: George Michael would write and produce, and other people would take the microphone. His cousin Andros Georgiou explains the name plainly — the Trojan horse, soldiers who get inside first and fight afterwards.

The guest list reads like something that only exists on paper: Aretha Franklin, Stevie Wonder, Sade, Janet Jackson, Bryan Ferry, Prince, Elton John. According to Georgiou, only David Bowie politely declined. Sony did not want the record, so Warner put up a million pounds. That October, Michael sued Sony.

In the room were Wendy Melvoin on guitar, Chris Cameron on keys, Deon Estus on bass, Lynn Mabry on backing vocals. Georgiou’s line about his cousin is that he had a forty-eight-track studio in his head. That is what the footage shows: not a pop singer, but a man directing first-rate players.

In March 1993 Anselmo Feleppa, the Brazilian man Michael lived with, died of Aids. The work stopped. "It was terribly difficult for him to finish anything so we went from track to track. And then it got too much for him," Georgiou says. In 2004 Michael summed those years up more briefly still: since 1991 he had either been waiting for someone to die or grieving.

Exactly one collaboration was finished — "This Kind of Love" with Elton John. Michael later re-recorded it alone, shortly before his death. Everything else sat for thirty-three years as tape, and as an hour and a half of unedited Hi8 video.

Those ninety minutes are now up at trojansouls.com, with "Ain’t No Stoppin’ Us Now" and "One Day I’ll Know" among the songs on screen. Georgiou’s reason is not a grand one: he says he got tired of watching other people make money from his rights, so he stopped fighting and put it out. There is still no album. There is a picture of how one would have been made.