but he always publicly maintained that he was straight, denying rumors to the contrary and speaking about his relationships with women. But in 1998, he was arrested for “engaging in a lewd act” in a public bathroom of a Beverly Hills park, an incident that publicly outed him. He responded to that whole ridiculous episode in the best way possible. Michael’s 1998 video for “Outside,” his first since his arrest, features him dressed as a Village People-esque cop, dancing in a bathroom with glittery urinals and disco balls hanging from the ceiling. It also features cops rounding up all the people who’d been having utopian kinky fun earlier in the video, before those cops then make out with each other. The officer who arrested Michael attempted to sueon the long-running UK chart-countdown show Top Of The Pops. That performance was a doozy. Lip-syncing his way through the goofy funk-rap pastiche of Wham!’s “Young Guns (Go For It),” Michael preened and strutted and gamely ran through some of the silliest choreography you will ever see. You owe it to yourself to watch.

18. THE AMERICAN IDOL COMEBACK

Confession time: I didn’t have my “holy shit, George Michel” moment until relatively recently. He was always around, and I liked plenty of songs, but I never considered myself a fan for whatever reason. Then, in 2008, Michael appeared on the finale of a very bad American Idol season, which I was recapping for The Village Voice. (This was the David Cook/David Archuleta season. It was rough.)

During that finale, the top