IMAGINE IF GEORGE MICHAEL had been granted the opportunity to become popular. Let's put that another way: Imagine if George Michael had been granted the freedom to detach himself from a record label that exploited him (Sony), so that he could become a prolific songwriter rather than a novelty act.

Tuesday's sold-out performance at the Verizon Center chronicled more than just the former Wham! frontman's musical maturation and hairstyles. It presented a living — albeit abbreviated — history lesson on the fickleness of a music industry intent on treating its talent like professional slaves.

After Michael's wildly successful album "Faith," released in 1987, he went on record stating his reticence to be a puppet for his label. As a result, his next studio recording, "Listen Without Prejudice, Vol. 1," was perhaps the crooner's flashiest work, and probably his most modest. Shrugging off the status of a preening sex symbol, he refused to appear in the now-iconic music video (featuring a bevy of bathing beauties including the supermodels Linda Evangelista and Cindy Crawford) for his song "Freedom 90." Michael got little airplay in America after that, and his creative output was stifled by lawsuits and frustrations.

That was then; this is now.

Michael is no longer the gangly lad with a thick, pomaded coif and a five o'clock shadow at 8 a.m. He's less energetic; there's very little flounce in his step. In fact, since he came out in the '90s, his onstage antics are decidedly less flamboyant than when he was a supposed rake.

"Who remembers the '80s?" he shouted at the arena teeming with every demographic, many of whom were clad in the (unfashionably fashionable) "Choose Life" tees that were popular for an endless summer. It hearkened back to a decade during which Michael seemed happy and hopeful. "Faith" used to be a theme of his career. Today, it could be interpreted as his anthem.

Last night marked the tour's 100th show. Michael employed a breathier tenor for ballads like "One More Try," a triumph of risk over heartache. His backup singers neatly rounded off the edges, though they could have been subbed with synthesized vocals in almost every instance other than the gospel-inflected "Father Figure."

And his band looked especially impressive positioned on six recessed levels. A pair of guitars — one acoustic, one plugged in — dueled playfully during "Faith" and the resident saxophonist provided studio-professional brass for the quintessential slow song, "Careless Whisper." But the live instrumentation didn't always present flattering embellishments.

Michael brought the concert to a grinding halt with the inclusion of a few covers — none of which enhanced the originals — and his band struggled to find the proper arrangement and tempo. The Nina Simone standard "Feeling Good" felt like little more than an excuse to display footage of Dita Von Teese, the professional enthusiast, slinking and sliding on giant video screens above the stage. And a sleepy rendition of The Police's "Roxanne," while expertly sung, cast the gray pall of a quiet storm onstage.

Michael roused the audience into a veritable frenzy with stomp-thump catwalkers like "Fastlove," "Everything She Wants" and "Too Funky," the latter studded with those long-stemmed dress forms Tyra Banks and Beverly Peele in Thierry Mugler on the big screens. When the enormous set, made entirely of tiny bulbs that curled from the rafters into the audience like a catwalk, wasn't projecting girls, girls, girls, its cascading images suggested an enormous screen saver.

Although he appeared to be having a fine time, Michael's pelvic pumps and fist gesticulations gave the impression that the audience was attending a dance club where only he was allowed to feel the funk. An arena of the scale and scope of the Verizon Center may be the wrong venue for a performer who — in spite of the throb of drum machines and digital orchestrations behind him — performs with such intimacy and sincerity.

"Spinning the Wheel," a disco-twisting song about sex and deception, didn't really need the computerized film reels scrolling images of troubled couples, from Frank and Ava to Sid and Nancy to Bill and Monica. "Outside" brought out the kitsch (and a strangely absent sense of humor) in him. An unqualified classic that hints at the public scrutiny of celebrity as well as the performer's own runs-in with Johnny Law, the compressed beat and ripe vocals gained a wink and a smile thanks to Michael's quick costume change into a police uniform (that could have been pawned at a garage sale at the Village People compound) replete with silver-striped tuxedo pants and a glittery badge.

For the second encore, Michael indulged the crowd with the song they seemed to have been waiting all night, if not 17 years, for. The bongo-busting introductory vamp set girls and boys squealing, and the familiar (though unrecognizably performed) guitar riff exploded into the evening's audience participated raison d'etre.

To wit: "All we have to do now / Is take these lies and make them true somehow / All we have to see / Is that I don't belong to you and you don't belong to me." "Freedom 90," while the climax of a concert 25 years in the making (and nearly two decades since his last American tour), was not the most affecting moment of the set.

Michael opened with "Waiting (Reprise)," whose lyrics sharply set the tone for the tour and for George Michael himself: "Well there ain't no point in moving on / Until you've got somewhere to go / And the road that I have walked upon / Well it filled my pockets and emptied out my soul."