British pop singer George Michael, who rose to fame with the band Wham! and sold more than 100 million albums in his career, has died aged 53, his publicist said on Sunday.
“It is with great sadness that we can confirm our beloved son, brother and friend George passed away peacefully at home over the Christmas period,” his publicist said in a statement.
Thames Valley Police said the ambulance service had attended a property in Goring in Oxfordshire, where the singer lived, at 1342 GMT on Sunday, the BBC reported.
They said they were treating the death as unexplained but there were no suspicious circumstances.
Michael was due to release a documentary in 2017 after a period of living as a virtual recluse in which he hit the headlines for a series of bizarre incidents linked to drugs.
Earlier this month it was also announced that producer and songwriter Naughty Boy was working with Michael on a new album to come out next year.
Michael was best known for his Club Tropicana, Last Christmas, Careless Whisper and Faith.
“2016 – loss of another talented soul. All our love and sympathy to George Michael’s family,” the band Duran Duran, which were 1980s contemporaries of Wham!, said on their official Twitter account.
Several iconic British musicians have died in 2016 including David Bowie in January and Status Quo guitarist Rick Parfitt, who died in a Spanish hospital on Saturday.
Drug charges and health scares
Michael was born Georgios Kyriacos Panayiotou to a Greek Cypriot father and English mother in north London in 1963.
He met Andrew Ridgeley at high school and the pair went on to form Wham! in 1981.
With their good looks, perma-tans, highlighted hair and hedonistic image, the duo captured the go-getting spirit of the age and fast became one of Britain’s biggest pop acts.
As their fame spread globally and in 1985, Wham! became the first Western band to play a concert in China.
Michael came out as gay in 1998 after being arrested for committing a lewd act in the public toilet of a Los Angeles park, the first of several incidents that were to overshadow his musical career in his later years.
He notched up police cautions for cannabis and crack cocaine possession and in 2010 was sentenced to eight weeks in jail after crashing his car into a London shop while under the influence of cannabis and prescription medication.
In 2011, he spent several weeks in hospital in Vienna after contracting pneumonia, later saying that he had been close to death.
There were fresh concerns in 2013 when he had to be airlifted to hospital after falling out of his chauffeur-driven Range Rover as it travelled at high speed on a motorway.