Will Young
William Robert Young is an English singer, songwriter and actor. He came to prominence after winning the 2002 inaugural series of the ITV talent contest Pop Idol, making him the first winner of the worldwide Idol franchise. His double A-sided debut single "Anything Is Possible" / "Evergreen" was released two weeks after the show's finale and became the fastest-selling debut single in the UK. Young also came in fifth place in World Idol performing the single "Light My Fire" written by the band the Doors.
As a teenager, Young studied politics at the University of Exeter before moving to London, where he studied musical theatre at the Arts Educational Schools in Chiswick. Young put his studies on hold in late 2001 to become a contestant on Pop Idol. After winning the competition the following year, he released his debut album From Now On which went straight to number one. Friday's Child followed and enjoyed greater success, eventually going platinum five times in the UK and spawning three top five singles on the UK singles chart. His following albums Keep On, Let It Go and Echoes also went multi-platinum and 85% Proof became his fourth UK number-one album on the UK Albums Chart. His albums Lexicon, Crying on the Bathroom Floor and Light It Up reached number 2, 3 and 5, in the UK Album Charts, respectively.
Young's albums have spawned many songs that have achieved top ten positions in the UK, four of which went to the number one spot. Young has also undertaken numerous concert tours, and has accumulated multiple honours, including two Brit Awards from 12 nominations, and the estimated worldwide sale of over eight million albums, as of 2009.
Alongside his music career, Young has acted in film, on stage and in television. For his performance in the 2013 London revival of the musical Cabaret, he was nominated for the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role in a Musical. He has also participated in philanthropy and released books Anything is Possible, On Camera, Off Duty, his autobiography Funny Peculiar, To be a Gay Man, and The A–Z of Wellbeing. In January 2022, he appeared in the third series of The Masked Singer as "Lionfish" and in May issued the compilation album 20 Years: The Greatest Hits.
Early life and education
Young was born on 20 January 1979 in Wokingham, Berkshire, and is the second-oldest child of Robin Young, a company director of an engineering firm, and Annabel Young, a plant nursery gardener. Born six weeks premature, he was ten minutes older than his twin brother, Rupert who died in July 2020. He also has an older sister Emma.Young's grandfather, Digby Aretas Young, was a flight lieutenant in the Royal Air Force, and features in Thomas D. Calnan's memoir. His great-great-great-grandfather was Sir Henry Young, fifth Governor of South Australia, later first Governor of Tasmania. His great-great-great-great-grandfather was Colonel Sir Aretas William Young, who, in 1795 at seventeen years old, joined the British Army and served in Ireland and Egypt before fighting in the Peninsular War. Aretas was later stationed in Trinidad and eventually took charge of the Trinidadian government, before moving to Demerara where he was appointed Protector of Slaves. Aretas became the sixth Governor of Prince Edward Island in 1831, and three years later was knighted by King William IV. The 1st Baron Despenser is Young's 18-times great-grandfather. Edward I was his 20-times great-grandfather. Edward was the great-grandson of William the Conquerer.
Young was brought up in Hungerford, West Berkshire, and was initially educated at Kingsbury Hill School in Marlborough, Wiltshire, before attending Horris Hill Preparatory School, Newbury, between the ages of eight and thirteen. His first appearance on stage was at the age of four when he played a fir tree in a school production and had one line to speak. At Horris Hill, Young was head chorister in the school choir, and at the age of nine he learned how to play the piano. Young recalls that at Horris Hill, pupils were taught that they were more privileged than pupils from state schools, and that one day he wrote a letter stating, "I must pass common entrance to take me to public school, otherwise I'll be going to state school and everyone will be very disappointed." At thirteen, Young and his brother were enrolled as boarders at the public school Wellington College in Crowthorne, Berkshire. Young appeared in several school productions and often gave speeches in assembly, despite later admitting that he never felt completely comfortable being the centre of attention.
It was during this period that he became interested in sports and for a time he dreamed of competing in the Olympic Games in the 400-metre sprint, which he could run in under fifty seconds – the Olympic average is forty-three seconds. He became captain of the school's basketball and athletics teams, and also represented the school in the triple jump, long jump, football and rugby. The only sport he says he felt uncomfortable playing was cricket.
Young left school with ten GCSEs, but achieved disappointing A-Level results and had to enrol in d'Overbroeck's College, Oxford, to re-sit his exams. He took a part-time job as a waiter at the Grand Café in Oxford, and became interested in environmental issues and local campaigning, joining a group called the Eco Society. He passed his A-Levels the second time, earning As in Politics and Ancient History, and a B in English. In 1998 Young began studying politics at the University of Exeter, choosing the subject because, "I thought I should know more about what was going on in my country." He also took women's studies at university and considers himself a feminist. His interest in performing arts continued, and he joined a theatre group called Footlights where he eventually landed the lead role of Curly in their production of Oklahoma! "I really enjoyed it and doing that gave me a lot of confidence", he later said of the show. He also took a work experience position at Sony Records to gain insight into the music industry. Other work included runway and photographic modelling, gardening, tearing labels off T-shirts in a clothing factory, and being a waiter. He graduated in 2001 with a 2:2 bachelor's degree. After leaving university, Young knew that he wanted to be a professional singer, but wanted training and experience. In September 2001 he became a student at the Arts Educational Schools, in Chiswick, London.
Career
1999–2001: Early auditions
In 1999 during his second year at university, Young watched an episode of This Morning and learned that the show was holding a competition to find members for a new boy band. He mailed the producers an audition tape and received a letter back from the show telling him he had been selected as one of seventy-five competitors, and that he had to appear in London for an off-camera audition. The 75 auditionees were whittled down to 9 finalists including Young, who were then invited to perform on the show. On 29 May 1999, Young appeared on the programme and performed a short rendition of the Jackson 5 song, "I'll Be There", in front of a panel of judges that included Simon Cowell, an artists and repertoire executive at BMG, and Kate Thornton, a former editor of Smash Hits, turned television presenter. One week later, Young was selected into the boy band alongside three other competitors. They were Lee Ryan who later joined the boy band Blue, Declan Bennett who joined the boy band Point Break, signed to Danielle Barnett, the current lead singer of Urban Cookie Collective and Music Manager who contacted him directly following the This Morning audition, and Andy Scott-Lee who went on to compete in the second series of Pop Idol. Cowell said of the group, "We've tried to find people with star quality and these guys can sing and dance", but the band failed to find any success and it soon dis-banded. Young's next audition was at the Guildhall in London to be a jazz singer, but he accidentally arrived on the wrong date.2001–2002: ''Pop Idol''
On 20 June 2001, one of Young's university classmates showed him an advertisement in the News of the World for auditionees of Pop Idol, a planned nationwide televised talent show to find a solo pop artist in a similar way that Popstars had created the pop band Hear'Say the previous year. The winner was guaranteed a £1 million recording contract with BMG and representation by 19 Management. He printed out an application form from the website, filled it out and posted it on 28 June. On 7 August 2001, he received a reply which told him he had been accepted for an audition at ExCeL London on 5 September 2001. On the day of the audition, Young performed Aretha Franklin's "Until You Come Back to Me " in front of an assistant producer, and was deemed good enough to be given a second audition two days later. For his second audition, Young sang "Blame It on the Boogie" by the Jacksons in front of a show producer and won a place to the third round to perform before the show's judges: Simon Cowell; Nicki Chapman, a Popstars judge who also worked as a publicist at 19 Entertainment, the company that was producing Pop Idol; Pete Waterman, a music producer who had written or produced twenty-one singles that had charted at Number One in the UK Singles Chart, 200 Top Tens, and sold over 500 million records for the artists such as Kylie Minogue, Rick Astley, Bananarama, Steps and Westlife; and Neil "Dr Fox" Fox, a disc jockey who presented the drivetime show on Capital FM and the nationally syndicated Pepsi Chart. He was the final contestant the judges saw, and after a day of watching mostly poor performances they were not in the best spirits. Again, Young performed "Blame It on the Boogie", but the judges thought his overall performance was merely average. Chapman told him that his dance moves had let him down, but his vocal was good. Fox described him as cheesy, Waterman was unimpressed by his stage presence and image – Young was wearing baggy and faded jeans, scuffed shoes and his grandfather's jumper which was stained with egg yolk – but conceded that his voice was "nice". Despite their uncertainty, however, they advanced him through to the next round. The following week, auditions were held at the Criterion Theatre, and Young sang "All or Nothing" by O-Town, the Drifters' "Up on the Roof" and "Fast Love" by George Michael. Still not completely convinced by his performances, he was made to wait in the "Maybe" room until the judges decided to send him through to the Final 50.The first episode of Pop Idol was broadcast on 6 October 2001 on ITV, and Young's audition aired on the third show on 20 October 2001. The next round of the competition was split into five heats that aired every Saturday between 3 November 2001 and 8 December 2001. Each show featured ten of the fifty competitors singing one song in the Pop Idol studios in front of the judges and an audience, but unlike previous rounds, the viewing public decided who would advance to the next round by interactive televoting voting using their telephones, the Red Button on digital television remote controls, and the Pop Idol website. The two singers with the highest number of votes in each heat advanced to the final rounds of the competition. Young competed in Heat 4, broadcast on 24 November, and sang a jazz/lounge interpretation of "Light My Fire" by the Doors. Judges Chapman, Fox and Waterman were all enthusiastic about his performance, but Cowell was unimpressed and called it "distinctly average", adding, "I just thought it was totally normal. In the context of the show I honestly didn't think it was good enough." The other judges and contestants all expressed shock at his comments, and Young responded, telling Cowell that while he was entitled to his opinion, it was wrong.
This incident has often been cited as the moment when Young's pop career truly began, standing out to viewers and endeared himself to them. It appeared that the voting audience agreed with Young and disagreed with Cowell, because he was voted through to the next round, in first place, with 41.5% of the overall vote. During Young's next appearance on the show on 15 December 2001, Cowell stated that he had previously made a "huge mistake", and that Young had conducted himself with a dignity that had humbled him. Young later stated that his proudest moment of the entire competition was this incident.
Young easily progressed through each subsequent round by performing jazz, lounge and soul versions of songs such as "Wives and Lovers", "Ain't No Sunshine" and "Beyond the Sea". In the first four weeks of the Live Finals, he received the highest percentage of votes. In weeks five, six and seven, he received the second highest percentage of votes, losing out on first place to Gareth Gates each time. In the Semi-final, competing against Gates and Darius Danesh, Young again received the most votes. Gates received 39.3% of the votes and won the other place in the Grand Final, while Danesh received 20.9% of the votes and was eliminated from the competition.
Throughout the following week, Young and Gates embarked on separate whistle-stop tours of the United Kingdom in large tour buses adorned with their faces, in an attempt to canvass for votes. In election-style campaigns, they made numerous radio and television appearances, were interviewed in magazines, national and local newspapers, and met and performed for their fans. Celebrities such as Noel Gallagher, Robbie Williams, Posh and Becks, Kylie Minogue, Myleene Klass, Michelle Collins, S Club 7 and Jenny Frost announced their support for Young, while Gates was backed by Duncan James, Natasha Hamilton, Richard and Judy, Westlife, Faye Tozer, Denise Van Outen, Ben Adams, Neil Tennant, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Claire Richards, Boy George, Ricky Gervais and Francis Rossi. The media pitted Young and Gates against each other, publishing false news articles claiming that the two contestants were bitter rivals and their parents were bickering and fighting backstage, stories which both camps denied. Although for a brief moment earlier in the series Young was favoured to win, bookmakers gave Gates better odds on the eve of the Grand Final, pointing to his angelic voice, good looks and displays of emotion that appealed to a younger audience, compared with Young's soulful crooning and maturity appealing to housewives and intellectuals. Gates was given various odds of 1/5, 2/9 and 2/7, while Young's odds were quoted at 100/30, 11/4, 3/1 and 5/2 at different times in the week.
On 9 February 2002, 13.34 million viewers watched Young and Gates battle each other in the Grand Final for the title of "Pop Idol". Both acts sang "Anything Is Possible" and "Evergreen", which were to be released as a double A-side single by the winner. Young also sang "Light My Fire" a second time as his favourite performance from the series. 8.7 million votes were registered over the two-and-a-half hours that the voting lines were open, which set a new world record. However, some voters complained that their votes had not been registered and that ITV, British Telecom and Telescope had not prepared well enough for the volume of calls because the system crashed at one point during the evening. It was also alleged that the phonelines had been fixed and they were involved in vote rigging. Nevertheless, Young was announced the winner of the competition after receiving 4.6 million votes, just 500,000 more than Gates. Young's shock at hearing the news was obvious to viewers as his jaw dropped and he clasped his hands to his face. "When he said what the votes were, I thought, 'I am second, and I have lost by that much. Oh well, that's not bad'," Young recalled. "When I heard I'd won... I felt like I'd been hit. I stepped backwards. I could not believe it." In 2011, Young described Pop Idol as "a huge starting point and... the best ever experience for me, ever."