Stuck in traffic? Got in a fight with a loved one? Somebody spilled beer on your favorite hotpink t-shirt?

This album will take all of that pain away and more.

Such issues as unemployment and teen pregnancy were never fun to dance to...until now! Say what you will about George Michael, but in my opinion, he is one talented man. Buy this.

Although it's only 8 songs deep, "Fantastic" is simply a fantastic album, I only wish that Wham's later albums would have been as good as this one. What makes "Fantastic" a good album is because it so much seemed to be about having fun and a good time. Songs like "Come On," "Ray of Sunshine," "Love Machine," Club Tropicana," and "Wham rap," just make you want to get up and dance. Although this album was released in the early 80's, it still has a late 70's disco vibe going on. The one ballad on the album, "Nothing Looks The Same In The Light," is classic. If you didn't become a Wham fan until their second album, be sure to check out this one too. It's a bit short but it's very sweet!

This is where it all started. This is the album that made me fall in love with the 'Boys from WHAM!' Althought they would not top the US charts until their next LP, this one still remains my favorite. Featuring the club classics "WHAM! Rap (Enjoy What You Do)", "Young Guns (Go For It)", "Club Tropicana", and the minor US success "Bad Boys", this album never lets the party end.

Besides the four brilliant singles, the album features the Motown classic "Love Machine" (a former hit for the Miracles) as well as the WHAM! classic "A Ray of Sunshine", probably one of George Michael's better pieces of work to date. This album is a must for anyone who loves the party music of the 80's, and for those of us who lived though the era, welcomes a happy return to days where things were so much brighter (could be the florescent colors we all wore back then!!).

The debut album of two Brits set out to be one of the defining pop-bands in the 80's. This was the first vinyl album I bought.

The songs are all great - excellent fun and dance records. Nothing like the serious Georg Michael of today (who shouldn't be embarrassed today that he recorded this album).

I rate 'Bad Boys' and 'Young Guns (Go For It)' as some of the best singles ever released, 'Club Tropicana' is not my personal favorite (but has an excellent video!) and 'WHAM! Rap' is a classic.

But the songs 'Nothing Looks The Same In The Light' and 'A Ray of Sunshine' are classics too! A must for a every fan of '80s pop and dance music!

If you can afford it, try to get a european version of this album, since you will get remixes of 'A Ray Of Sunshine', 'Love Machine' and 'Nothing Looks The Same In The Light', which extends the album to well over 50minutes of fantastic (George and Andrew were quite modest with their title:-)

Wham!'s 1983 debut album "Fantastic" was released when George Michael was just 20 years old, & it demonstrates conclusively that he already had an incredible knack for writing and crafting catchy songs. George and his partner Andrew Ridgeley had a "rebel" image going at this time--admittedly, you'd have to be nuts to take all of the over-the-top "tough guy" posturing on here seriously (something that George Michael himself would be the first to admit), but at the same time, it sure does offer a load of amusement value, and when you add to this the huge hooks and crisp, high energy dance-pop performances (including Michael's enthusiastic vocals) on track after track, the result is an album that, for the most part, is so irresitibly fun it's almost beyond belief. The laugh-out-loud hilarious "Young Guns (Go For It)" and the hilariously anthemic "Wham Rap (Enjoy What You Do)" both put Michael's already excellent falsetto vocals on display, and despite a little bit of grating synth on the former & excessive repetitiveness on the latter, they're both massively catchy. "Wham Rap" is actually a comment on what Michael viewed as a general lack of aspirations/ hopefulness among English people; it's intended to be tongue-in-cheek, encouraging people to, as Michael put it, "get off their asses", & the track really hits the nail on the head. Also massively catchy are "Bad Boys" and "Club Tropicana", the latter of which is still uptempo, but mellower and without the posturing. Wham!'s obvious disco influence comes through on "A Ray of Sunshine" and "Come On"--both of which are really catchy--as well as a rather needless, but respectable cover of the Miracles' "Love Machine". Unfortunately, the album's one ballad, "Nothing Looks the Same In the Light", is quite a drag--musically, it's quite thin with a dull, minimal melody, and it's excessively dragged out--still though, it does have a certain contemplative quality and provides a bit of a hint of the excellent ballads Michael would subsequently deliver. Andrew Ridgeley has been tagged as having been Michael's "silent parter" in Wham!, but to be fair, Ridgeley is credited for co-writing "Wham Rap" and "Club Tropicana" with Michael, plus he played guitar on all but one track. Of course, George Michael evolved a lot in subsequent years--by all means, don't expect to find on "Fantastic" any of the kind of emotionally moving music you'll find on Michael solo records such as "Older". Still, if you've got a sense of humor and can appreciate the catchiness and craft, you'll realize this is a damn good album in its own right.