Will Young had already come out publicly. That didn’t stop someone at his record label from finding a problem with how he sounded on Leave Right Now.
According to Young, the complaint was that his voice sounded “too gay.” He was asked to record it again.
Producer Steve Lipson found a different solution: he sent back exactly the same recording. This time, it was approved.
Young revisits the episode in a new interview with The Independent, published on October 1, ahead of his appearance on Roisin O’Connor’s Good Vibrations podcast.
It’s an absurd little story with an unmistakable point. Nothing about the vocal had changed. The people judging it had simply decided they could accept it.
Young has discussed the incident before. What the new conversation brings is a wider reflection on the restrictions he felt even after coming out.
He won the first series of Pop Idol in 2002 and publicly came out soon afterward. Yet he remembers a proposed concept for the Leave Right Now video involving a female love interest.
His sexuality could be public knowledge while the images around his music still suggested something else.
Young also describes feeling unable to express himself sexually in the way a straight male pop star could. A shirtless straight singer could be considered sexy; he worried that the same gesture from him would be dismissed as camp.
He remembers trying to be “acceptably gay,” comparing the resulting feeling to being a Ken doll.
For readers who spent years working out how much of themselves other people would tolerate, that distinction may feel familiar. Saying you are gay and feeling comfortable showing your attraction, affection or desire can be very different experiences.
The interview also includes a present-day relationship update: Young, now 47, has been with his partner for two years. He reflects on the work involved in opening himself up to a relationship.
Meanwhile, The Evergreen 25th Anniversary Tour will take him around the UK with his band in February and March 2027, revisiting songs including Evergreen, Light My Fire and Leave Right Now.
A quarter-century after the public first voted for him, those songs remain part of his story. So does the producer who understood that the vocal didn’t need fixing.
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