If one would ask people to name their favourite George Michael song of all time, it would definitely be Careless Whisper. Most recently listeners of UK's radio station Capital FM have voted it their all time favourite song.

Yes, George IS cool

The story of Careless Whisper begins early. George wrote it together with Andrew Ridgeley way back when the boys were 17 years of age. George said that although he "knew nothing about romance and certainly nothing about love" he and Andy managed to write a song which on August 18, 1984 began a three-week run atop the UK chart and did the same on February 16, 1985 when it was released credited to Wham! featuring George Michael in the USA.
Careless Whisper gave Epic (Wham!'s record label) their first single to sell more than 1 million copies in the UK and in December of 1984 they were to receive their next single to do so when Last Christmas was released.

Wham!: Receiving a BPI award for Careless Whisper

A demo tape recorded in Andy's parents' front room in 1982 included not only Careless Whisper but also early versions of Wham Rap! (Enjoy What You Do?), Come On! and Club Tropicana and gave them their first record contract with Innervision Records, a label founded by ex-Phonogram employee Mark Dean and which was distributed by Epic/CBS.
In 1983 George travelled to Muscle Shoals Studios in Muscle Shoals, AL, to record a solo version of Careless Whisper, with Jerry Wexler producing. These sessions were instructive, but unsuccessful and he returned to London to re-record the ballad for a later release. It was clear by then that the song was to be a George Michael solo record, as George's upbeat songs fitted the Wham! image better than a ballad of this calibre.

From the video:
"You're asking me to kiss a man with a wig on?"

As mentioned before, in 1984 Careless Whisper was released and it was a world-wide smash, who knows what would have happened if the Wexler-version would have been issued as the main mix. On a limited edition of the 12" single this so-called Special Version was available though as it was on the 12" single in Japan. Before George recorded his new version, shooting of a video had even already begun. A hint to that are the two different hairdos of George's that appear in the video as it is shown today. They had to re-shoot many scenes because not only the version of the song had changed but also its release date. Innervision wanted Wham! to release it as a single after Club Tropicana but George refused to do so, and so they issued the Club Fantastic Megamix much to Wham!'s distress. It all ended in the court room and after Wham! had signed with the Epic label and had issued Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go the time was right to release Careless Whisper.
George wrote the following words on the back of the sleeve of the single: "This record is dedicated to my mother and father - Five minutes in return for 21 years".
The only thing unfortunate with the re-filmed clip: One can never watch Andrew Ridgeley playing a taxi driver as this is what he did in the original video.