George Michael Childhood Home — Burnt Oak, London

George Michael — Georgios Kyriacos Panayiotou — grew up in Burnt Oak in the London Borough of Barnet, the son of a Greek Cypriot restaurateur father and English mother. It was in the streets of north London that he met Andrew Ridgeley at Bushey Meads School in Hertfordshire, forming the friendship that became Wham! Michael's remarkable pop instincts were apparent from the beginning — 'Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go,' 'Careless Whisper,' and 'Freedom' were all written by a teenager or young man who had absorbed soul, disco, and pop with unusual sophistication.

Michael's solo career after Wham!'s 1986 dissolution produced Faith (1987), one of the best-selling albums in history, and Listen Without Prejudice Vol. 1 (1990), a more artistically ambitious work that he refused to promote with music videos or interviews — a decision that prefigured decades of conflict with the music industry. His voice was one of the great instruments in British pop, a warm, elastic baritone capable of remarkable expressiveness, and his songwriting talent was genuine and underrated beneath the pop sheen.

Burnt Oak is a working-class suburb in the London Borough of Barnet, at the end of the Northern Line. George Michael died on Christmas Day 2016 at his home in Goring-on-Thames, Oxfordshire. He is buried at Highgate Cemetery in north London, a few miles from where he grew up. His grave has become a significant pilgrimage site.