Will Young, Avalon Stage at Glastonbury, June 28th
The Pop Idol kicked off his summer festival shows at Glastonbury
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Wednesday, 02, Jul 2008 09:21
As accepted as he is among music snobs of the critical and commercial worlds alike, it's still hard to imagine a Pop Idol winner going down well at Glastonbury.
But how he did, making forthcoming album even more eagerly-awaited, especially by the boyfriends who could at first be seen grimacing as their girlfriends grooved to Young's smooth tones only to be visible belting out Leave Right Now with a smile on their face by the end.
Wearing a pork pie hat, he belts onto the stage amid a rapturous reception, launching straight into One of a Kind, before he prefaces second album favourite Love is a Matter of Distance with some polite chatter - of course it was polite, it's Will Young!
"It's taken me six and a half years to get here, but I made it!" he shouts, and a later BBC interview with an enthusiastic Edith Bowman and a sceptical Zane Lowe reveals just how fervent a Glastonbury punter the Evergreen star has been, having attended the event for nine years.
So you can understand why he's so committed, being frightened to disappoint an audience at the same stage on which he saw Suzanne Vega's smart-arsed New York sounds, but after a swaggering Your Game and inviting the crowd back to his Winnebago for "a disco", it's clear that Will Young hasn't just won the hearts of the members of the British public who buy their records in Tesco, but also those who are happy to slate the exact type of talent show on which he made his name.
Leave Right Now is the most glorious and unlikely of singalongs and as the crowd filters away from the Green Fields stage, anxious for more, there's two feelings in the air - i)I hope he plays next year and ii)He couldn't deserve it more.
Lewis Bazley
To see the nostalgia-inducing video for Who Am I, click here