A British coroner has ruled that pop star George Michael died last Christmas of “natural causes,” according to the Associated Press.
He had “heart disease and a fatty liver,” a British coroner found this time. Michael’s initial autopsy was “inconclusive.”
Darren Salter, the senior coroner for Oxfordshire, England, says a post-mortem discovered that the singer died of “dilated cardiomyopathy with myocarditis and fatty liver.”
Dilated cardiomyopathy is a condition in which the heart’s ability to pump blood is limited; myocarditis is inflammation of the heart muscle.
Michael died at his home in Oxfordshire county, southern England, on December 25. He was 53.
Born Georgios Kyriacos Panayiotou to a Greek Cypriot restaurateur and his wife, Michael first emerged as a hit-maker with Andrew Ridgeley in the pop duo Wham! in the early 1980s. Their early hits included the songs “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go,” “Careless Whisper” and “Last Christmas.”
But he became a true pop icon after going solo in 1987, when his album “Faith” sold more than 20 million copies worldwide. In the span of his career, Michael sold more than 100 million records worldwide.
Michael won two Grammys among eight nominations and earned many other honors during his career, which spanned more than three decades.