George Michael had been gone from the pop war for a long time and he returned with a purpose. Patience, his first full album of original songs since Older (1996), arrived in March 2004 after sessions that were stretched across years. The record was not a hurried comeback. It was a deliberate reappearance. The world around him had altered. The charts had changed. The clubs had changed. He chose to meet them on his own terms.

He recorded at his own pace and with a small, trusted team. The sessions for Patience ran between about 2000 and 2003, and the album gathered everything he had been thinking about in that period. There is tenderness enough to recall personal loves and losses and a sharper political edge leftover from the early 2000s. In that atmosphere "Flawless (Go to the City)" began as a fragment of a dance-floor idea. George Michael wanted a moment on the record that could live in clubs and on the radio at once. He found his doorway in an American house record by the Ones.

He built the song from a sample and from a decision. The backbone of "Flawless (Go to the City)" is lifted from the Ones' track "Flawless." That single, a club hit in the early 2000s, already wore disco and late 70s funk at its center. George Michael took that material and rewrote the phrase and the beat into a George Michael song. The choice was both musical and theatrical. He was reclaiming a moment of queer club culture and making it emphatically his own voice.

The single came at a particular moment in his life and career. Patience debuted at number one in the United Kingdom in March 2004. George was settling back into public view after years of legal fights, personal disputes and a slower pace of releases. He was also more willing to court dance music again after years that emphasized ballads and adult contemporary textures. "Flawless" was not accident. It was a declaration that he could still make a sharp, joyous pop record that spoke to the clubs and to his sense of identity at once.

Release dates varied, as they commonly do for singles aimed at different markets. The track was issued in late June and July 2004 in several territories, and some listings show other summer 2004 dates for specific territories. The song's life would be carried not just by the album version but by remixes and by a single edit and a striking long-take music video that amplified the track's presence in both mainstream and club contexts.

The record was produced by George Michael himself and polished by longtime engineers and mastering hands. Credits for Patience and the single list George Michael as producer. Mastering duties for the album were handled by Tony Cousins at Metropolis Mastering in London and by Tom Coyne at Sterling Sound in New York for some pressings. That combination put a final professional sheen on material that George had shaped in his own exacting way.

Recording and programming were handled by a small circle of collaborators. Engineers and programmers credited across the Patience sessions include Ruadhri Cushnan, James Jackman, Niall Flynn, Pete Gleadall, David Austin and Johnny Douglas. Assistant engineering on the project lists Adam Noble at AIR Studios and Andy Davies at other London facilities. The work reads like a modern pop production: programmed drums, layered keyboards, selective guitar textures and careful vocal overdubs, all placed with the precision of somebody who had long since learned how to conduct a studio.

Technically the song blends a pre-existing house groove with live production choices that foreground the vocal. The track keeps the original Ones groove as its structural spine while George reworks the vocal lines, adds programmed percussion and inserts touches of live instrumentation where needed. That approach created a hybrid: a sample-rooted house track reassembled as a pop statement. The mixes produced for the single broadened the song's club reach. Remixers on the release included Shapeshifters, Jack 'N' Rory, The Sharp Boys and Boxer. Each remixer was chosen to reframe the track for DJs and nightclub floors.

The music video came as part of the single's studio-era thinking. The visual for "Flawless (Go to the City)" was directed by Jake Scott and conceived in collaboration with concept developer Andrew Trovaioli. The clip was shot as a single continuous take and staged in a hotel suite, where a series of people enter, change and align themselves with the music. The decision to make a single-take video matched the song's club logic: choreography, community and a sense of performative intimacy recorded in one breath. The video later brought a Grammy nomination for Best Short Form Music Video and helped carry the song into wider attention.

Flawless (Go to the City) (Album Version)

The album version is the locus. It takes the central loop from the Ones and places George Michael's voice and lyric over it until the two become inseparable. The beat is house-born. The groove is propulsive. George sings as if he is both on a club floor and standing over a typewriter. The lyric is a short sermon about beauty, aspiration and movement: "You've got to go to the city." He repeats that injunction until it reads like advice and like a command. Instrumentally the track keeps things lean. Programmed drums sit low in the mix. Bass and percussive stabs push, while keyboards and small guitar lines puncture the space. The production choice is obvious and deliberate. He wanted a song that danced and also told a story about wanting more. In the album sequence the track acts as the record's burst of pure dance energy. It arrives after the darker, more reflective pieces and forces the listener to stand up and move.

Flawless (Go to the City) (Jack 'N' Rory Vocal Mix)

Jack 'N' Rory transform the song into a straight club weapon. Vocals are pushed for maximum singalong lift. The remix stretches the groove and tightens the percussion for long DJ play. Where the album version rests on George's phrasing, this mix highlights the vocal as a hook to be repeated across the floor. The arrangement expands the feel of the original loop and puts more emphasis on four-on-the-floor momentum. The mix is practical. It is meant to be dropped into sets and to ride the peak-time energy. In the context of the single EP it serves the purpose of extending the track's life beyond radio edits and album sequencing.

Flawless (Go to the City) (Shapeshifters Remix)

The Shapeshifters remix leans into a more soulful, jackin' house territory familiar to early 2000s UK clubland. It opens space in the arrangement and re-pitches the harmonic accents so the vocal breathes differently. Shapeshifters were known at the time for turning vocal hooks into extended dance narratives. Here they take George's lines and refract them through a warmer piano and brighter percussion palette. The effect is to make the song less a pop single and more a house anthem. For listeners who lived in clubs, this remix would be the version to own.

Flawless (Go to the City) (Boxer Mix)

The Boxer Mix gives the song a harder-edged club setting. The beat is denser. The bass is more insistent. Boxer pares back melodic ornamentation and emphasizes rhythm and drop. It is a DJ's tool. The mix reframes George's performance into a role that is less frontman and more voice as texture. The vocal becomes a sample in a larger percussive architecture. As part of the EP it broadens the single's appeal to rooms that favored weight over shimmer.

Flawless (Go to the City) (The Sharp Boys Hot Fridge Vocal Mix)

The Sharp Boys deliver a longer, maximal dance-room version. Their Hot Fridge Vocal Mix runs to roughly eight minutes and provides room for build, variation and sustained intensity. The remix accentuates the chorus and the repeating city injunction. It privileges looped vocal hooks and extended percussion breaks so the track can sit at the center of a club set for a long time. The result is celebratory and ruthless. The music becomes communal. That quality is no accident. George gave this single over to remix culture. He wanted his voice to be part of the club's circulatory system.

Overall, the five-track configuration moves from album statement to practical club tools. The album version is the song's identity. The remixes are variations that test and enlarge that identity. Together they create an arc: a compositional claim followed by multiple translations for different dance floors. Sequence matters. The album version anchors the EP. The remixes offer permutations. The listener is invited to hear the core lyric and then watch it mutate. That movement is the point. It is the single's argument about the function of pop in the 21st century: to be pliant, to be immediate, and to be reimagined by the rooms that will keep it alive.

The single charted in the mainstream and exploded inside the clubs. In the United Kingdom "Flawless (Go to the City)" reached the top ten, peaking at number eight on the UK Singles Chart. In the United States the record became a bona fide club success. It hit number one on Billboard's Dance Club Play chart. For George Michael this was significant. The track reasserted his presence in dance contexts where he had not been front-and-center for some years.

The music video amplified the single's reach and critical profile. Directed by Jake Scott and conceived with Andrew Trovaioli, the continuous-take video became a talking point. It was nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Short Form Music Video at the 47th Annual Grammy Awards. The nomination gave the single visibility beyond record stores and clubs. It placed the work inside awards conversations and in the press cycle during the summer and autumn of 2004.

Critically the release was received as a deliberate return to pop and to club culture. Review voices in the music press singled out the track for its camp energy and for George's willingness to work with a contemporary house record rather than ignore it. The remixes were recognized by DJs and dance press as useful and compelling. The single's commercial showing in the UK and its number-one placement on the US dance chart confirmed that the strategy worked on multiple fronts.

The legacy is specific and narrow but real. The song stands as one of George Michael's outspoken entries into dance music in the later phase of his career. It is also a document of his method: to borrow, to reframe and to sing in a way that both honors the source material and reasserts his own authorship. The single is commonly remembered by fans for its video, for the remixes that circulated in clubs and for its role on Patience as the album's clear dance-floor moment.

Over time the track has functioned as a bridge. It ties the recorded, private George Michael to the public, performative spaces of clubs and remixes. For listeners who came to George through his ballads the track was a reminder that he could inhabit the floor. For dance audiences it reaffirmed that their culture was worthy of his attention.