An Evening with Will Young

My music tastes have never really been what you might call 'cutting edge'.  I blame my Dad, who not only aurally assaulted my sisters and me from birth with Roy Harper and Leonard Cohen, but when I got my first record player (second-hand from my Nan) we didn't have the money to actually buy any records for a while, so to compensate Dad went up into the attic and found some of his and my Auntie Julie's old record collection from their youth, to keep me going until I could buy the latest 'Now!' compilation (we were only on Now! 8 or 9 then which makes me feel supremely OLD - I think I saw an ad for Now! 11, 235 the other day).  The dust-covered collection included George Formby's 'When I'm Cleaning Windows', something by Lonnie Donegan (of 'My Old Man's a Dustman' fame) and David Cassidy's 'Could it Be Forever' (a song I rather shamefully still play now and know all the words to).

This is a roundabout way of me trying to excuse my fandom of Will Young, whom I've loved ever since I was twenty-three and voting for him non-stop on 'Pop Idol' (the rest of my family were Gareth fans, the philistines!).  You know how there are some artists you like but you just feel a bit embarrassed to admit it?  Well for some reason I've always felt a bit like that about lovely Will...maybe because his audience has always seemed a bit middle-aged and middle-of-the-road (both more like me than I'd care to admit?!)  I can't help it though...he just has one of those rare, wonderful voices that brings me out in goosebumps.  There.  I've said it.

Anyway...I've just come home from a concert of his at a local venue which I thoroughly enjoyed.  And I while I was there I made a few useless observations, which I have decided to report uselessly below, in the name of having nowhere else to put them:

• Will's music doesn't really lend itself to dancing.  Even the more 'upbeat' tracks are more sway-fests than dance-fests.  It was therefore quite amusing to watch some of the rest of the audience try to decide what to do with their bodies whilst watching and listening to lovely Will.  Some swayed slightly, some clapped (that's always funny as well, watching people decide when they should stop clapping) and some just threw their whole bodies into it with careless abandon.  Even when Will sang 'Leave Right Now'.
• The lady sitting in front of me spent most of the concert taking pictures of the stage, then posting them to her Facebook page.  She wasn't the only one...the room was littered with people taking endless pictures, or filming the concert and then texting the footage to their friends.  While the concert was going on.  Why?!  How is that in any way enjoyable?
• I spent most of the concert utterly transfixed by the keyboard player in Will's backing band, who had the cutest, smiliest face on the planet.  Plus he kept doing these endearing little 'twitches' in time with the music and singing along with Will like his life was depending on it.  
• Will Young dances like someone who's been chained up by his feet, then shoved head first into a paper bag full of tickly feathers.  That was endearing as well.
• The man next to me evidently thought he could sing as well as Will.  But he was wrong.