Popjustice
  • Home
    • Briefing archive
  • Features
  • Playlists
  • Get Popjustice emails
  • About Popjustice
    • About
    • Popjustice: Est 2000
    • The Popjustice Twenty Quid Music Prize
  • Contact
    • General contact details
    • Submit music
  • Forum
Recent Posts
  • New Music Monday: Griff's Black Hole is super, and massive
  • New Music Friday: Let's kick off 2021 with some KLF
  • The Top 45 Singles Of 2020
  • New Music Friday: Mae Muller doesn't want to be dependent
  • New Music Friday: There's a big one from Royal & The Serpent
Hello! In theory you should only be seeing this if you're using a mobile or tablet. How's the site looking? If anything's wonky click here and tell us so we can fix it. Thanks! x
Popjustice
  • Briefing
  • Features
  • Playlists
    • New Music Friday: The Popjustice Edit
    • Big Hit Energy
    • 21st Century Pop
    • 2018% Solid Pop Music
    • Full archive
  • About
    • About Popjustice
    • Contacting Popjustice
    • Send music
    • Popjustice: Est 2000
    • The Popjustice Twenty Quid Music Prize
  • Forum
  • The Briefing

Good things about the new Will Young single

  • September 22, 2009
  • Popjustice

1. 'Hopes & Fears' sounds a bit like two different Eurythmics songs plus bits of
Laughing Girl Lennox solo tune 'Little Bird', except with a man singing.

2. It's upbeat in the BPM stakes but lyrically it is a 'mature rela­tion­ship' song and is not, for example, an excitable jumping-up-and-down ditty of teenage romance. It's a very sober sort of pop tune. It begins with Will saying "look at what you do to me, I don't know who I'm becoming, baby looks
like you're no good, you don't take care of me like you should", while the chorus notes that "hopes and (hopes and) fears bring us all to tears, baby this'll tear us apart, I don't even know what you want".

3. It is three minutes and forty seven seconds in length. That's seventeen seconds longer than the optimum length of a decent pop tune but the last seventeen seconds is just adlibs so you could probably fade it early if you wanted. Which would be a shame, because then there would be a fade instead of…

4. …the song's abrupt end.

5. It works as well a single aimed at flogging copies of Will's Greatest Hits but it doesn't really sound like anything else on the Greatest Hits, so it's one of those looking-back-while-looking-forward jobs.

6. There are some amazing bursts of MANSINGING late on in the song in which Will's voice goes all deep and com­mand­ing and blokey.

7. It is not jazz and it is not overly serious and/or muso. Nor is it stupid. It's all very 'on brand' for Will Young ie "here I am singing a song about serious rela­tion­ship issues, oh hang on I appear to be riding a horse/going for a swim/pretending to be John Noakes in a video" etc. Very charming and warm and approach­able and all the usual Will Young things.

8. There's a "let go let go let go" middle eight where loads of the song drops out and then it all comes back in again.


9.
If it hasn't already, it's destined to cause a small explosion at a Radio Two playlist meeting.


10.
And that's your lot.

  • Will Young
Previous Article
  • The Briefing

Good things about the new Will Young single sleeve

  • September 22, 2009
  • Popjustice
Have a read
Next Article
  • The Briefing

Erik Hassle: he's a serious young man you know

  • September 22, 2009
  • Popjustice
Have a read
Further listening
Greatest hits
  • Kylie Minogue interview: "I do like cosmic thoughts"
  • Robbie Williams interview
  • 100 things the Rihanna album's better than
Further reading
  • 1
    New Music Monday: Griff's Black Hole is super, and massive
  • 2
    New Music Friday: Let's kick off 2021 with some KLF
  • 3
    The Top 45 Singles Of 2020
  • 4
    New Music Friday: Mae Muller doesn't want to be dependent
  • 5
    New Music Friday: There's a big one from Royal & The Serpent
  • 6
    New Music Friday: Baby Queen takes the throne
Est 2000. Still going.
Socials

 Spotify
 Facebook
 Twitter
 Instagram
 Soundcloud

'Quick links'

About Popjustice
Contact Popjustice
Sign up for the news­let­ter
Submit music
Est 2000
Twenty Quid Music Prize

Playlists

21st Century Pop
New Music Friday: The Popjustice Edit
2018% Solid Pop Music
The Sound Of Popjustice
Playlist archive

© 2020 Popjustice Ltd. Scrolled to the bottom now you're here
  • Privacy, Ts & Cs, cookies etc
  • Corrections

Input your search keywords and press Enter.