Pop Culturette Flashback: When George Michael’s “Freedom! ’90” Turned Supermodels Into Pop Stars
By Alexus Mosley
Photo Credit: Peter Lindbergh/British Vogue
There was a moment in the ’90s when supermodels weren’t just models, but also celebrities, muses, tabloid fixtures and bona fide pop culture stars. Few moments captured their ascent better than George Michael’s “Freedom! ’90.”
Released in 1990, the David Fincher-directed music video famously pushed Michael out of the spotlight and handed it to five of the era’s most recognizable models: Naomi Campbell, Linda Evangelista, Christy Turlington, Cindy Crawford and Tatjana Patitz.
They strutted, smoldered, and lip-synched for six-and-a-half minutes, turning a group of fashion models into the stars of one of the most iconic music videos ever made.
By the beginning of the ’90s, George Michael was already one of the biggest pop stars in the world. But after the enormous success of Faith, the singer had become increasingly uncomfortable with the celebrity image surrounding him.
For his second solo album, Listen Without Prejudice Vol. 1, Michael wanted the focus to shift away from his appearance and back toward his music. That meant refusing to appear prominently in his own music videos, something rather unusual for the MTV era.
So when it came time to create a visual for “Freedom! ’90,” Michael needed other stars capable of commanding the screen, and fortunately for him, fashion had plenty.
The inspiration was reportedly sitting right on a magazine cover. British Vogue’s January 1990 issue featured Naomi Campbell, Linda Evangelista, Tatjana Patitz, Christy Turlington and Cindy Crawford photographed together by Peter Lindbergh. The image would become one of the defining photographs of the supermodel era. Michael wanted the women from the cover for his video.
Directed by a young David Fincher, “Freedom! ’90” placed the five models in a moody, cinematic world where they took turns lip-syncing Michael’s lyrics. There was no traditional narrative and no choreographed pop-star performance. Instead, the models themselves became the spectacle.
Crawford lounged in a bathtub, while Evangelista dramatically sang into the camera, and Campbell danced around a dimly lit room. Turlington crawled across the floor with Patitz bringing her signature cool, mysterious presence.
It looked less like a conventional music video and more like a fashion editorial had suddenly come alive.
The casting worked because something much bigger was already happening.
Models had existed as famous figures before the ’90s, of course, but this particular generation was becoming something different. Their names increasingly mattered as much as the designers whose clothes they wore. Together, they represented a particular kind of fashion celebrity that the ’90s perfected.
More than three decades later, “Freedom! ’90” still feels like a time capsule from the precise moment when fashion, music and celebrity culture collided. Now, the women of the runway weren’t simply fashion stars anymore. They were pop stars, too.