22 July 2023 , 17:04
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George Michael could return to the stage as a hologram, seven years after his tragic passing.
Best pal and Wham! bandmate Shirley Kemp, 61, gave fans fresh hope of seeing the iconic star perform as she mused about the 80s pop band and their upbeat hits being immortalised in pixels.
She said: “Maybe there could be a Wham! hologram show like ABBA’s.”
The other surviving members of Wham! Andrew Ridgeley, 60, and Helen ‘Pepsi’ DeMacque-Crockett, 64, are also keen on Shirley’s idea.
George's best pal and Wham! Andrew was asked about a possible Wham! hologram tour when he appeared on Newsnight.
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He said: "My thinking would be, ‘Fantastic!’ To have Wham! At its pomp, playing live.
Andrew Ridgeley and George Michael performing with Wham! in 1985 (Getty Images)"Of course, there are ethical questions. And that decision would be a mutual decision between myself and [George Michael’s] estate, should it ever come to it.
"And I can’t speak for them, I don’t know how they would feel about it. But I think it could be done, and I think it could be done exceptionally well. I’d pay to go and see it!"
George passed away on Christmas Day in 2016 aged just 53. At the time of his passing, it had been four years since George had performed a solo show.
Meanwhile, Wham! last performed in 1986, packing out Wembley Stadium with an epic farewell show called The Final, where they were joined by special guests like Sir Elton John and Simon Le Bon.
Pepsi told Classic Pop that she was fully behind Shirlie’s plan and is excited at the thought of a Wham! comeback with George.
She said: “That’d be amazing! Our routines would evolve into being really slick. Those holograms? They would be really on it.”
George tragically died in 2016 (Getty Images)However, last year a close pal of George's vowed to “never” to let him be depicted that way.
He said: “We were thinking about doing something at the Royal Albert Hall. We had an idea: in the middle of Fastlove, where the rain comes down in the video, we looked at a hologram in the middle of the Royal Albert Hall which we thought would blow people away.
“I had all these people courting me – and they’d done the Tupac hologram. “I went to look at a lot of them and they were s***. They were really poor. It just did not work.”
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Holograms of Swedish pop foursome ABBA have been performing at a specially designed venue in London’s Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park since last May - the first time the group had been in concert for 42 years.
The performance features avatars - dubbed ‘ABBAtars’ - of the Swedish pop stars as they appeared in their pomp in 1979.
It has been such a huge hit that the ABBA Voyage virtual concert residency will run there until at least May 2024, making the band millions of pounds.