Panayiotou v Sony Music Entertainment (UK) Ltd the copyright to Sony for many years, leaving him no control over how the music would be marketed nor placing a reciprocal requirement that the label invest in promotion. Had the case succeeded, it might have curtailed the practice of signing artists to multi-album contracts. The court wholly rejected the claims. Georgios Panayiotou, known professionally as George Michael, signed with Innervision Records in 1982 at the age of eighteen as part of the then relatively unknown pop duo Wham!. Innervision were distributed by CBS Records. In 1984 this contract was nullified as part of a legal compromise wherein Wham! were
George Michael 1963. His father, Kyriacos Panayiotou (nicknamed "Jack"), was a Greek Cypriot restaurateur who emigrated to England in the 1950s. His mother, Lesley Angold ("née" Harrison), was an English dancer. In June 2008, Michael told the "Los Angeles Times" that his maternal grandmother was Jewish, but she married a non-Jewish man and raised her children with no knowledge of their Jewish background due to her fear during World War II. Michael spent most of his childhood in Kingsbury, London, in the home his parents bought soon after his birth; he attended Roe Green Junior School and Kingsbury High School. His older