Michael refused to appear in the music video for the song, directed by David Fincher, and cast a group of supermodels to appear instead. It went into heavy rotation on MTV and was remastered for the 2017 documentary, George Michael: Freedom. By 1990, Michael had become weary of the pressures of fame, telling the Los Angeles Times, "At some point in your career, the situation between yourself and the camera reverses. For a certain number of years, you court it and you need it, but ultimately, it needs you more and it's a bit like a relationship. The minute that happens, it turns you off ... and it does feel like it is taking something from you." Accordingly, he decided not to appear in photo shoots and music videos saying: "I would like to never step in front of a camera again".
Although he later relented and decided to film a video for his new song, he still refused to appear in it. Instead, inspired by Peter Lindbergh's now-iconic portrait of Naomi Campbell, Linda Evangelista, Tatjana Patitz, Christy Turlington, and Cindy Crawford for the January 1990 cover of the British edition of Vogue, Michael asked the five models to appear in the video. While models appearing in music videos was then commonplace, they usually played the singer's love interest, for "Freedom! '90", the five models, rather than portraying his on-screen girlfriends, would lip sync the song in Michael's place. The video also included male models John Pearson, Peter Formby, Rafael Edholm, and fashion photographer Mario Sorrenti.
The video was directed by David Fincher. His team for the multi-day "Freedom! '90" shoot included Camilla Nickerson, who later became a Vogue contributing editor, as the clothes stylist, hair stylist Guido and makeup artist Carol Brown. Cinematographer Mike Southon shot the video in a vast building in the London Borough of Merton that Nickerson says exhibited "a grandeur and a Blade Runner feel". Despite not appearing in the video, Michael was on set.
The 92-sketch storyboard called for each model to film on separate days, except for Evangelista and Turlington, who appear in a scene together. Each model was assigned a verse to lip-synch, while for the song's chorus, Fincher envisioned the three iconic items from Michael's 1987 music video "Faith" that had come to symbolize his public image at the time: his leather jacket, a Wurlitzer jukebox, and guitar, exploding in a ball of flame, except the leather jacket, at each occurrence of the word "freedom" during the chorus. Before the chorus, the leather jacket was simply ignited and burned. Whereas "Faith" had opened with a jukebox phonograph needle touching a vinyl record, "Freedom! '90" opens with a compact disc player's laser beam reading a CD, after Evangelista turns on the CD player.
The video premiered a few weeks after the shoot, and was heavily aired on MTV.
The song was considered a highlight from the album, with a catchy chorus and uptempo, jangling instrumentation, coupled with his signature soaring vocals make this confessional a striking example of Michael's newfound independence and proves that his struggle for seriousness could retain the hooks and brilliant tones that make his music so endearing.
"Freedom! '90" was 6:30 long, but a shorter version was made available for radio consumption. It was the second US single from the album Listen Without Prejudice Vol. 1, and had contrasting fortunes each side of the Atlantic—it peaked at number 28 on the UK Singles Chart, but was a major success on both the US Billboard Hot 100 and US Cash Box Top 100, reaching number 8 and 7 respectively. In Canada, Michael achieved another chart-topper.
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