Will Young: ‘It Got Much Worse After Pop Idol. I’m Surprised There Hasn’t Been an Exposé on The X Factor’

Being recognised by people isn’t normal, and there were extremes. 

I remember once having to escape through the fire exit of a service station because I’d gone to use the loo and the paparazzi all came into the garage. It was right at the height of the madness. 

I remember going to Marks and Spencer another time and they had to shut the doors as fans were trying to follow all of the Pop Idol cast there. It was right off the back of such a popular TV show and we were doing a tour. If you had more than a couple of us, it would go bonkers. 

That level of fame is quite fun – it goes back to the kind of mania over pop stars in the 1960s, and maybe even the 1950s, that really started with Elvis, then the Beatles. I had a smattering of that, though never on the same level. 

I remember having a meeting about doing international promotion. Someone said that, after working with me, he wouldn’t be able to walk down any street in the world without being recognised. I left the meeting because I said that was my idea of hell. So I didn’t do any international promotion. I was one of the only artists to turn it down.

The context of being famous over 20 years ago was the press, which is so different now. 

You can’t discuss it without talking about phone-hacking and the lawlessness of photographers and celebrity magazines. This was before social media, and there was a shaming element that came with those magazines. It was typically very bad towards women – you’d see headlines like ‘look how awful she looks on the beach’ or they’d circle a roll of skin on some woman.  

It affects other people too – my friends and family included, because the press would be doorstepping them. 

Then there were people saying not very nice things in the papers, but you have a choice whether you want to read it or not.

I was pretty resilient, and I was very driven. I concentrated on why I was famous – I wanted a career as a singer and actor. I tried to have as normal a life as possible. The other option of blacked-out cars and posh restaurants seemed pretty grim. I probably became hardened to the attention. 

It was enormous then – shops would let paparazzi in [to chase me]. Even smart restaurants would. Being followed was scary. What would you do if you were a normal person being followed by someone with a really big lens?

I used to ring the police and report that someone was following me. I enjoyed reporting it sometimes – I’d be in the park and tell the police ‘I’m in the park and there’s kids in the playground, and there’s a weird man in an anorak with a long lens taking pictures near the kids’. The police would come really quickly.

I had a pass to go through the embassy road by Kensington Palace, which was a lifesaver because I lived in Notting Hill. The photographers following me couldn’t get through quick enough – the police wouldn’t let them through. It was very scary. 

There was a brilliant opera about [the late American model and actress] Anna Nicole Smith, Anna Nicole, in which they made the paparazzis’ faces into cameras – a clever take on how, when they’re following you, you don’t see a face, just a camera. The obvious example of that is Princess Diana, trying dangerously to escape them. 

But it was pretty tricky. And it was hard being openly gay and having a relationship. When I look back on it, we just got photographed the whole time throughout my first relationship.  

A [major] impact was probably the phone-hacking [that the papers were conducting] on a lot of my peers outside of the programme. Everyone was dealing with it. Some people fell out with friends and family, accusing them of leaking personal information. From the beginning, I was told to use a secure phone for serious calls. I’ve had two cases of getting reparations for that – I was delighted.

Some things that were said to me as a gay man were pretty bad. 

I remember an interviewer having an in-depth conversation with me on the radio about whether I was a ‘top’ or a ‘bottom’ [as a gay man], and I was just pretending it was funny. Looking back on it now, that’s just horrific. But I never witnessed abuse as I was often just a guest on shows.

Pop Idol was different – we were lucky. People didn’t realise it would be such a money-maker. So there was not really much manipulation [of contestants going on behind the scenes]. It got much worse after Pop Idol. I’m surprised there hasn’t been an exposé on The X Factor. Apparently people keep working on exposés, but the show has disappeared from our screens (it was last broadcast on ITV on 2 December 2018, with the entire programme officially cancelled after 17 years in July 2021). Former contestants like Rebecca Ferguson talk about it and Jedward. I think there’s a huge story that hasn’t seemed to have been told in terms of the treatment of contestants. Very powerful people are behind it, I guess. 

(Following the death of Liam Payne in October, Ferguson – who competed in the same series of The X Factor as Payne – said “I believe he would be alive today” if hadn’t participated in the show. Another contestant from the same series, Katie Waissel, said that Payne’s death “highlights the urgent need for change in the music industry” and called for an “immediate investigation” into the company behind The X Factor. “Artists are not commodities and their wellbeing must be prioritised… No more profit over people. Let Liam’s story spark the reform we desperately need”).

There’s a generation of people who don’t even know what I do. It’s fantastic. Only my ego would be interested in how famous I am. 

I’m proud of what I do – I think I’m known for being good at it. But it’s quite nice to get on the train and not worry [about being recognised]. I haven’t been photographed for years.

If you really wanted to walk around thinking about fame, you’re going to have a pretty awful life. It’s all so completely stupid. I know someone who’s just obsessed with famous people, and I always feel really sorry for them, because there’s a much bigger world out there.

I’m not sure the media has as much power as it did then. The papers aren’t what they were because people now skip the media and they take their narrative into their own hands [through social media]. That’s huge because you don’t have to placate these [press] people. Their work back then was pretty monstrous.

I quite enjoy social media, but I don’t look at any comments. I think that kind of thing can really get into people’s heads. I couldn’t imagine being able to live in the comments sections.  

But there’s such pressure on it now. You have to have so many followers to even get on the radio. 

Streaming has changed everything. 

Since it came in, I’ve lost 95% of my sales profit – I release records but earn nothing from them. Music has become basically free, so I run a free shop. If I didn’t tour, I wouldn’t earn anything. 

The public don’t care about that because they want their music for free. Why wouldn’t they? So the appetite [for change] is not really there. It’s quite bizarre. It would only work anyway if all massive acts took their music off streaming platforms. Why would they do that? 

I was doing some promotion for a song recently and suggested doing some radio abroad, to be told ‘we’ll just get you on some [streaming] playlists’. But I said ‘I don’t make any money on playlists’. And the response was ‘we’ll just get on a big playlist’ for exposure. It’s a weird illusion. Radio at least gives you PRS [royalty] rights. 

I know a big global artist who had a song recently on a big global album and they made £400 pounds from streaming.