He’s just released the best album of his career, he’s happily single, and he’s bought a new house. Is it any wonder Will Young is so content? Alan Corr meets the singer and talks about love, life and growing up
It wasn’t meant to happen this way. The usual career trajectory of most TV talent show winners is one of initial hype, a mandatory Christmas No.1, tabloid ignominy, and, finally, an over-familiarity with Simon Cowell’s message machine.
Then there’s Will Young.
Ten years after triumphing on Pop Idol, a forerunner to X Factor, the 32-year-old finds himself with eight million album sales, a promising sideline career as an actor, and the respect of the kind of peers who would normally scoff at his lowly beginnings.
“Well, it’s great to feel that you’re not mad and that you believed in something and other people believed in it too”, says Young in his crisp, well-educated accent. “I don’t mean that in a smug way but it’s nice when things go right, it’s nice when you have a passion for something and you want it to work. It’s nice to be liked really. That’s why I’m in the job – most performers just want to be liked. We all want to be appreciated. It’s what makes us want to perform.”
Liked he is. I meet Young after one of his busiest weekends of being ‘liked’ in quite a while. His new album Echoes has just gone to No.1, ITV have just given him his own hour-long special, and he’s moved into his new house. “It’s been a mad weekend. It’s crazy”, he smiles. “As my friend’s daughter said the other day when I got her a Justin Bieber ticket, I have so much happening I don’t know what to do with it. It’s a bit overwhelming but it’s fantastic.”
He may be cast as a kind of Tory-voting, well-groomed pop star from the rolling hills of Berkshire but somehow you don’t begrudge Young his success. Then again, he’s always been a different kind of performer. As well as winning an Ivor Novello Award for the very fine Leave Right Now he’s had an edition of The South Bank Show dedicated to him and aged 22, he sang with Burt Bacharach at the Royal Albert Hall.
He’s also treaded the boards in a production of Noël Coward’s The Vortex (a play about drug abuse and sexual vanity among the upper classes) and he’s still toying with the idea of making an album of Coward songs. Not something we can see Olly Murs doing anytime soon.
In fact, there’s something of the old-fashioned song and dance man about Young, but he has a very modern heart. That’s more than clear on Echoes, an elegant set of dance tracks that recall the coming-of-age gravitas of George Michael’s Older and which take Young’s studied melancholia to new heights. He’s been writing songs for the album for nearly seven years but he began to record it in earnest after the reception of his work with cooler-than-thou dance act Groove Armada.
It appears that having great record sales and success were all very well, but now Young craves credibility. “Well no. I’m not doing this album for credibility. I’m doing it for my own integrity”, he says. “That’s a better word but I think you’re right – when you get to a certain stage in a career you do feel braver and I like to think I’ve always been brave. I don’t have to worry about the mortgage so much and things like that, which is nice, but I think it is about integrity now for me.
"Sometimes people can treat listeners as stupid and I don’t think listeners are stupid. I think listeners want to be challenged. I’m not saying this is an avant-garde record but I think people overthink it sometimes as, ‘mainstream, oh no, we can’t do that!’ Really? I think you’ll find it will be OK.”
Echoes is certainly a far cry from the mum pop tag he’s been inflicted with over the years. “People are too quick to judge audiences but an audience is an audience and I don’t have a problem with any audience people want to associate me with”, Young says maybe a tad tetchily. “I just had a chat with someone who told me their 88-year-old grandmother loves my new single and then I spoke to someone who said she’d just heard her eight-year-old daughter singing it.”
He denies that Jealousy, the first single from the new album, is in any way about him. “Actually Jealousy and Come On are the only songs that are not personal”, he says. “I’m not a jealous person. Well I don’t get jealous in relationships. I can get professionally jealous sometimes, oh yeah we all do. There’s a song that you wish you’d written or a director you want to work with. I don’t get jealous of friends’ success. I embrace it.”
The electro throb of Echoes does take him right back to his clubbing days. “I don’t know about taking me back because I get worse as I get older!” he laughs. “I love clubbing. Oh god yeah, I love it. I love going out. Never did drugs. I have enough natural energy going on in my head and my body, so no thanks. I’m not going out in that capacity. Although I love dancing, I don’t go on the dance scene and that’s not where this record came from. I like to stretch myself.”
Young has stretched himself quite a bit over his decade-long career. A graduate of politics, he writes occasional opinion pieces for the London Times and he’s appeared on the BBC’s Question Time. On the flipside of all that, he was named Male Rear of the Year in 2005, an accolade he can add to awards for the Most Stylish Male Music Star, Best Bod, Sexiest Star, Best Dressed and Best Hair.
“Best bod?” he asks. “God you wouldn’t want to see me today! I just scoffed two slices of banana loaf! It gets harder to keep in shape the older you get but I do run the London Marathon every year so that does help and later today I’ll be off to run around the park.”
ext thing Young will be telling us he helps out in a shelter for sick children in Bolivia every summer and campaigns on behalf of the endangered Andorran llama. In reality, he does indeed do a lot of work for charity and is a spokesperson for several.
He deals with the inevitable X Factor question with good humour. “Well I was in a van moving to my new house when it was on the other night”, he says. “It’s hard for me because I get asked about The X Factor a lot. This is probably the 100th time this month. I came from that kind of show, a very different beast then, and I do have an interest because it’s part of popular culture and if it brings great talent than that’s fantastic.”
Young came out as gay shortly after he won Pop Idol in 2002 and has been single for three years. Is he enjoying the freedom? “What’s it like? Three years, it’s alright. I’ll go out with someone if I meet someone. I’m happy being single. I don’t really think about it that much to be honest. I’ve had two relationships, they’ve been great, they finished and the next one will happen. I am very happy at the moment really.”
So at the ripe old age of 32, you’re beginning to feel comfortable in your own Speedos? “I suppose so”, Young says. “As you get older you always, hopefully, feel more comfortable, get wiser and all that which makes for an easier life. I think it’s combination of all those things. It’s also about being around for ten years, growing as a songwriter, growing as a singer.”
He has to leave right now. “Someone is waving at me”, he says apologetically. “I’m on a very tight schedule.”
That or there be must be more banana loaf doing the rounds over at his new house.
Echoes is out now
Alan Corr
