WILL YOUNG - Keep On Review

Wha-? When did that happen? Since when did Will Young make good music? With 'Keep On', Will's somehow gone from insipid, shapeless pap to hungry, gutsy pop with a spring in its step and a pack of johnnies in its pocket. And it's giving us the horn.

The title track and album opener is a rallying call - it starts out with noodly strings that suggest the kind of mush that the king of ballads is famed for, before folding back into an understated fightsong that oozes self-assurance. ...full text That Will Young's made a good album shouldn't come as a surprise. He's always had it in him. Even his debut, the majority of which was hijacked by the obligatory "Pop Idol" nonsense, had a handful of decent, intelligent songs which suggested there was more to him than a polite exterior and pleasantly jazzy voice. That his third album is such a fantastically mature and strong collection of grown-up pop, should however, catch even his staunchest supporters off guard.

...full text Will Young's first album, From Now On, was necessarily a compromise between material already written for whoever won Pop Idol and the particular stylings of an intelligent young man who, entirely rightly, saw the opportunity of winning a talent show not as an end but as a means to a career beginning.

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