Patience

1	Patience 2:53
2	Amazing 4:25
3	John and Elvis Are Dead 4:23
4	Cars and Trains 5:51
5	Round Here 5:54
6	My Mother Had a Brother 6:17
7	Flawless (Go to the City) 6:51
8	American Angel 4:07
9	Precious Box 7:39
10	Please Send Me Someone (Anselmo's Song) 5:26
11	Freeek! '04 4:28
12	Through 4:55

Barnes & Noble

For his diehard fans -- who entertained themselves with 1999's campy collection of standards, Songs from the Last Century, and waited eight years to hear new material, Patience proves to be their great reward. Like fellow '80s icon Prince, who also made a comeback in 2004 with the inspired Musicology, George Michael returns to making music that's both a platform for his proselytizing and substantive enough to please the masses. Lyrically, Michael revisits the universal themes of love, loss, persecution, and redemption found on 1990's excellent, Listen Without Prejudice, Vol. 1. But in light of his more recent indiscretions -- namely, his humiliating arrest in 1998 for soliciting a male police officer in a Beverly Hills park bathroom -- the openly gay Michael isn't afraid to tackle more personal subject matter. On the poignant "My Mother Had a Brother," he laments the suicide of his uncle, who felt tormented by his own homosexuality. As he did with the melancholy "Jesus to a Child" (from 1996's Older), here the 40-year-old pop star dedicates a song -- the Latin-tinged "Please Send Me Someone (Anselmo's Song)" -- to a lover who died of AIDS. This time, however, Michael sounds optimistic that his prayers for another companion will be answered, and on the breezy "Amazing" and the soaring "American Angel," he sings of the new love that sustains him. Although no Michael effort would be complete without his waxing philosophical in his breathtaking falsetto about the injustices of God and man -- addressed here on the somber title track and the borderline-silly "John and Elvis Are Dead" -- Patience finds the singer-songwriter in a more festive mood. In the vein of Faith's "I Want Your Sex" and Older's "Fastlove," Michael waves his glow stick on the fervent disco anthems "Precious Box," "Freeek! 04," and "Flawless (Go to the City)." Although the tortured "Through" --on which he claims, "Suddenly, the audience is so cruel" -- suggests that this disc may be his last, for our sake let's hope Michael merely needs another lengthy sabbatical to craft his next masterpiece. Tracy E. Hopkins

People Magazine

The disc, which sounds like a sequel to 1990's sublime Listen Without Prejudice Vol. 1, demonstrates why the British star should have been -- and could still wind up being, if he doesn't stick to his claim that this will be his last CD -- the Elton John of his generation. Chuck Arnold