It’s wild to think that we’re coming up on almost 20 years since Will Young first entered the public eye. In 2002, he beat Gareth Gates to win Pop Idol – and a brilliant British pop star was born. Since then, Young has travelled pretty far from the machine-tooled pop industrial complex: his latest album, Lexicon, is his seventh, and first for an independent label (Cooking Vinyl).
In recent interviews, Young has spoken about how liberating he has found independence. (“At 40, my new thing is: oh, fuck off,” he recently told the i.) He also ditched his management team and found that the resulting calm reinvigorated his love of pop – aided by collaborators including Richard X and Eg White. Lexicon, he says, is about fun and freedom rather than digging too deep personally, and it sounds like welcome relief after a difficult period. In 2016, he withdrew from Strictly Come Dancing, citing his anxiety, depression and PTSD. He suffered personal losses and professional compromises and, in 2017, said he was going to quit pop.
A period performing in Strictly Ballroom in the West End proved reinvigorating, as did leaning in to his activist side. Young was one of the early 2000s’ few out gay pop stars; in recent years, he has been an active campaigner on LGBTQ issues, promoting inclusive kids’ books on CBeebies and presenting two seasons of the award-winning podcast Homo Sapiens with pal Chris Sweeney. (His comments accusing Jeremy Clarkson’s The Grand Tour of homophobia earlier this year were particularly gratifying: “Screw them and the show and Amazon … for putting this shaming archaic tripe out,” he tweeted.)
Thankfully, Young came back around to pop: he has spent the summer playing festivals and seen two singles from Lexicon hit the BBC Radio 2 A-list, while the album only just missed No 1 due to the reign of chart behemoth Lewis Capaldi. This October, he’ll undertake a 21-date tour of the UK, and next year, he’ll release his first book, How to Be a Gay Man.
You can ask Young about all that, and anything else, when he comes into Guardian HQ at 1pm on Monday 2 September. Post your questions below.
