The truth behind the accusations that Fadi Fawaz leaked a “missing” song by his partner, singer George Michael.
On December 28, the tabloid’s headlines blared that Fadi Fawaz leaked a “missing” George Michael song.
Fadi tweeted a link to a Bing video search result (not even to the actual YouTube video) of the song “This Kind of Love,” captioning his tweet simply with “My Baby.”
The song seems to perfectly encapsulate the emotions at that time, with its lyrics ‘Now everyone has to get over I know, but this empty house seems to get colder and colder.’
The song was believed to be included on George’s unreleased album Trojan Souls that George started sometime in 1991 and was scheduled for release in 1993. The album was to feature songs in collaboration with other vocalists including Aretha Franklin, Elton John, Stevie Wonder and Anita Baker. However, the record was halted over Michael’s legal problems with his former label, Sony. (Source: “George Michael’s Trojan Souls Greatest Hits in Progress”)
While some fans appreciated the gesture allowing them to discover this “unheard” song of George, the way that media covered this story fanned the growing dissent towards Fadi.
The Mirror Online, for example, highlighted in its headline that Fadi leaked the song “just days after the singer’s death” – insinuating opportunism on the part of the grieving lover. Many flocked to social media berating Fadi for milking the death of his lover and leaking a song.
However, some commenters in the Mirror article pointed out the erroneous claims made in the report. The user chihuahualady04 wrote that “Whoever wrote that GM’s boyfriend leaked this song & was incorrect needs to do his fact checking.” Another Mirror reader Jen said,
“There are multiple versions of this song readily available for consumption. Quick search would have shown you that. Lazy.”
Fadi was simply pointing to something that already existed in the public domain. He defended himself by tweeting that several versions of the song already existed online:
The video that Fadi linked to was uploaded on November 2016, a month before George Michael died (that video has since been removed by YouTube following copyright claims by the Recording Industry Association of America). There are also versions of Elton John singing “This Kind of Love”, with this one uploaded on January 6, 2013.
Here is a YouTube video of the song “This Kind of Love” sung by George that was uploaded on July 23, 2014.
So how can Fadi “leak” a George Michael song that has already been out there for months, even years? “Linking” to the song, is vastly different from “leaking” it; yet the tabloids seem to have left their common sense and assumed that linking means leaking.