Keep On Reviews
BBC Review - Source
What a relief: a perfect pop album. In Keep on, Will Young continues in his quest to veer as far away from the slushy cover TV ballads, and onto critical acclaim. Co-writing most songs, reflective, non-naff, lyrics are backed by instrumentation reminiscent of Stevie Wonder, (hear toe-tapper "Happiness") wrapped in the warm production of Steve Lipson.
Ultimately, Will's thin voice will never be the easiest listen, but he can be forgiven, since he sings so well, and so impassioned. The album falls into two genres: beautiful lush torch ballads, like "Who am I", "All Time Love" and "Save Yourself", whilst stand out tracks "Madness", "Keep it on" and "All I Want" are driven funky little numbers. If you've never had time for TV talent contest winners, here make an exception - it's the single proof that sometimes, these shows actually work to give us, the public, what we really need.
What a relief: a perfect pop album. In Keep on, Will Young continues in his quest to veer as far away from the slushy cover TV ballads, and onto critical acclaim. Co-writing most songs, reflective, non-naff, lyrics are backed by instrumentation reminiscent of Stevie Wonder, (hear toe-tapper "Happiness") wrapped in the warm production of Steve Lipson.
Ultimately, Will's thin voice will never be the easiest listen, but he can be forgiven, since he sings so well, and so impassioned. The album falls into two genres: beautiful lush torch ballads, like "Who am I", "All Time Love" and "Save Yourself", whilst stand out tracks "Madness", "Keep it on" and "All I Want" are driven funky little numbers. If you've never had time for TV talent contest winners, here make an exception - it's the single proof that sometimes, these shows actually work to give us, the public, what we really need.
MusicOMH - Source
Will Young's first album, From Now On, was necessarily a compromise between material already written for whoever won Pop Idol and the particular stylings of an intelligent young man who, entirely rightly, saw the opportunity of winning a talent show not as an end but as a means to a career beginning.
By his second record, the five-times platinum Friday's Child, Will was beginning to express his own R&B-jazz-pop style a little more freely, but it was still an imperfect album of two halves, divided between languid soul-lite stylings and what sounded like commercially written banker hits that had been given to Will to sing.
Keep On, in contrast, sounds like the first completely Will Young album and a quantum leap beyond the benchmark of his last two records. Just about all the songs suit his playfully smooth vocals, and his working relationship with producer Steve Lipson seems to have allowed him the confidence and opportunity to turn his hand to a range of styles.
There's Bo Diddley riffage in lead single Switch It On; ecstatic show-tune partying with Ain't Such A Bad Place To Be; bossanova bounciness in the infectious, salsa-tinged cover Happiness; electropop layering in the title track. Amongst the best is classic ballad All Time Love, a sentimental, romantic song that should trouble the upper reaches of the chart come Valentine's Day 2006. It sounds like a grown-up companion piece to Leave Right Now - many a heart will surely soar while listening to it, and live it is set to be a phone-waving moment, even if romantics might prefer to remember lighters-aloft days.
Another sure-fire hit is the lyrically clever and solidly built Who Am I. Lesser singers would belt out the instantly memorable chorus, but Will reigns his vocals in to sound like he actually means what he's singing. Another song with interesting lyrics, Save Yourself, seems be an ode to a drug addict and features a shimmering arrangement topped with woozy sax. Once again it is delivered by a singer who seems emotionally connected to the piece. Its polar opposite is the James Brown-style funk of Think It Over, one of several tracks that seem designed entirely to have lots of fun with.
In a more poignant moment, the end of a relationship is delicately observed in the Nitin Sawhney-penned Home. Will's vocals have never sounded more distinctive, and Sawhney combines elegantly fingered acoustic guitar with a cinematic turn of events midpoint, with strings, pipes and piano fleshing out the song to a lovely orchestral and vocals conclusion. A classic Sawhney track, it could as easily have appeared on one of the scarily brilliant maestro's own records, but it works well here for a performer who gives the lyrics resonance.
Ultimately it's how well Will and his collaborators handle Keep On's range of styles that impresses most. Robbie Williams tries variety, but he doesn't manage it this successfully.
Only with Madness and All I Want does the album falter; compared to the rest of this spicily varied record they sound relatively generic and rushed. But overwhelmingly Keep On is an impressive work of pop that succeeds in broadening Will's already considerable adult appeal. Keep On indeed.
Will Young's first album, From Now On, was necessarily a compromise between material already written for whoever won Pop Idol and the particular stylings of an intelligent young man who, entirely rightly, saw the opportunity of winning a talent show not as an end but as a means to a career beginning.
By his second record, the five-times platinum Friday's Child, Will was beginning to express his own R&B-jazz-pop style a little more freely, but it was still an imperfect album of two halves, divided between languid soul-lite stylings and what sounded like commercially written banker hits that had been given to Will to sing.
Keep On, in contrast, sounds like the first completely Will Young album and a quantum leap beyond the benchmark of his last two records. Just about all the songs suit his playfully smooth vocals, and his working relationship with producer Steve Lipson seems to have allowed him the confidence and opportunity to turn his hand to a range of styles.
There's Bo Diddley riffage in lead single Switch It On; ecstatic show-tune partying with Ain't Such A Bad Place To Be; bossanova bounciness in the infectious, salsa-tinged cover Happiness; electropop layering in the title track. Amongst the best is classic ballad All Time Love, a sentimental, romantic song that should trouble the upper reaches of the chart come Valentine's Day 2006. It sounds like a grown-up companion piece to Leave Right Now - many a heart will surely soar while listening to it, and live it is set to be a phone-waving moment, even if romantics might prefer to remember lighters-aloft days.
Another sure-fire hit is the lyrically clever and solidly built Who Am I. Lesser singers would belt out the instantly memorable chorus, but Will reigns his vocals in to sound like he actually means what he's singing. Another song with interesting lyrics, Save Yourself, seems be an ode to a drug addict and features a shimmering arrangement topped with woozy sax. Once again it is delivered by a singer who seems emotionally connected to the piece. Its polar opposite is the James Brown-style funk of Think It Over, one of several tracks that seem designed entirely to have lots of fun with.
In a more poignant moment, the end of a relationship is delicately observed in the Nitin Sawhney-penned Home. Will's vocals have never sounded more distinctive, and Sawhney combines elegantly fingered acoustic guitar with a cinematic turn of events midpoint, with strings, pipes and piano fleshing out the song to a lovely orchestral and vocals conclusion. A classic Sawhney track, it could as easily have appeared on one of the scarily brilliant maestro's own records, but it works well here for a performer who gives the lyrics resonance.
Ultimately it's how well Will and his collaborators handle Keep On's range of styles that impresses most. Robbie Williams tries variety, but he doesn't manage it this successfully.
Only with Madness and All I Want does the album falter; compared to the rest of this spicily varied record they sound relatively generic and rushed. But overwhelmingly Keep On is an impressive work of pop that succeeds in broadening Will's already considerable adult appeal. Keep On indeed.
allmusic - Source
Will Young was growing up. It had been three years since his unexpected win on the first season of Pop Idol and even at the time of his second album, Fridays Child, he had stated his intention to distance himself from the moniker of being a TV reality show winner, especially as the careers of such winners tended to be notoriously short. So there he was on the cover of his third album, Keep On, looking remarkably like the actor Tod Carty, who played the weather-beaten character of Mark Fowler on BBC-TVs Eastenders. On Keep On. Young was mature enough to write (or at least co-write) most of the tracks, including the first two, "Keep On" and "Switch It On," both quite funky numbers. Then came the album's first ballad, "All Time Love," every bit as tuneful as "Anything Is Possible" or "Evergreen," his debut single and still the best-selling single of the 21st century. There was a mixture of styles on Keep On, from the salsa, holiday-inspired "Happiness" to the Justin Timberlake pastiche of "Ain't Such a Bad Place to Be," on which even the Indian-style intro worked well, to the ballads "Save Yourself," "Who Am I," and the final song, "Home," a haunting atmospheric track co-written by Nitin Sawhney, Keep On out of steam near the end with three tracks, "Madness," "All I Want," and "Think About It," all again co-written by Young but nothing more than album fillers, none of them having much of a melody. Three singles were released from Keep On, "Switch It On," "All Time Love," and "Who Am I," all of which either reached or got pretty near the Top Ten, and there were a few other tracks that would have made great singles, too. Altogether an excellent pop album from an artist who was maturing very nicely as the years went by.
Will Young was growing up. It had been three years since his unexpected win on the first season of Pop Idol and even at the time of his second album, Fridays Child, he had stated his intention to distance himself from the moniker of being a TV reality show winner, especially as the careers of such winners tended to be notoriously short. So there he was on the cover of his third album, Keep On, looking remarkably like the actor Tod Carty, who played the weather-beaten character of Mark Fowler on BBC-TVs Eastenders. On Keep On. Young was mature enough to write (or at least co-write) most of the tracks, including the first two, "Keep On" and "Switch It On," both quite funky numbers. Then came the album's first ballad, "All Time Love," every bit as tuneful as "Anything Is Possible" or "Evergreen," his debut single and still the best-selling single of the 21st century. There was a mixture of styles on Keep On, from the salsa, holiday-inspired "Happiness" to the Justin Timberlake pastiche of "Ain't Such a Bad Place to Be," on which even the Indian-style intro worked well, to the ballads "Save Yourself," "Who Am I," and the final song, "Home," a haunting atmospheric track co-written by Nitin Sawhney, Keep On out of steam near the end with three tracks, "Madness," "All I Want," and "Think About It," all again co-written by Young but nothing more than album fillers, none of them having much of a melody. Three singles were released from Keep On, "Switch It On," "All Time Love," and "Who Am I," all of which either reached or got pretty near the Top Ten, and there were a few other tracks that would have made great singles, too. Altogether an excellent pop album from an artist who was maturing very nicely as the years went by.
Alexis Petridis, The Guardian - Find Source
Anyone who happened to be in Covent Garden yesterday evening may have received a nasty shock. X Factor runners-up G4 were there too, regaling people with selections from their forthcoming album. While you're pondering what sort of world it is in which Londoners can't shop without being molested by a gormless operatic man-band singing Coldplay's Yellow, it's worth noting that G4's rise offers a lesson in the benefits of hindsight. In 2002, Pop Idol winner Will Young released his debut album, From Now On. Some critical voices (alas, including this one) suggested that with its dismal version of the Doors' Light My Fire, a definitive nadir had been reached in TV talent-show pop. Rash scarcely begins to cover this judgment.
Three years on, how majestic Young's cover of Light My Fire sounds when compared with, say, G4's unprovoked assault on Radiohead's Creep. How needlessly vicious one was about Young's abilities as an interpreter of popular song, knowing nothing of David Sneddon, or Michelle McManus, or indeed Steve Brookstein's version of Yah Moh B There. How mean it was to suggest he sang with all the passion of a taped message saying your call is important to us and may be recorded for training purposes, when just around the corner lurked the massed ranks of Pop Idol finalists putting the boot into Happy Xmas (War Is Over).
No wonder Young has gone from strength to strength, avoiding the ghastly fate of fellow finalist Gareth Gates, who hurtled to commercial oblivion, pausing only to have his virginity snatched by Jordan en route. Instead, Young's second album, Friday's Child, went five times platinum and he has embarked on a successful acting career.
Despite early appearances to the contrary, Young possesses one character trait lacking in his fellow Pop Idols and X Factorites: a personality. And, initially at least, his third album suggests that personality is getting stronger all the time. Keep On's opening title track offers a peculiar and winning combination of electro breakbeat, Chic-y funk guitars, and Bacharach-ish interludes, heavy on the muted trumpets. More characterful still is the lyric, which concerns itself, explicitly, with the business end of the love that dare not speak its name: "You know I'm going to ride it, I won't hide it," pants Young. "Hey, I'm coming!" Obviously, there's no reason why Young shouldn't write a song like this - he's an out gay man whose current video plays on Top Gun's unwitting homoeroticism - but arriving so soon after Jamie Cullum's knickers-off anthem Get Your Way, it leaves you wondering what sexual curveball the housewife's favourites will throw next. Perhaps James Blunt will write a doe-eyed piano ballad about coprophilia.
If not as striking as this first track, Switch It On still implies Young is willing to chance his arm artistically. It has a walloping Bo Diddley hambone rhythm, distorted vocals, frantic harmonica and no tune whatsoever: if nothing else, it's a brave choice as a single. All I Want, meanwhile, is genuinely brilliant, a great song overlaid with falsetto vocals and sinister, echoing slide guitars that hint - wildly improbable as this sounds - at Syd Barrett-era Pink Floyd.
Elsewhere, however, things turn towards the middle of the road. There are a couple of squelchy ballads in the Leave Right Now vein, and two songs that sound like You're Beautiful - Young is clearly unwilling to secede his mumsy fanbase to Posh Boy Jim without a dust-up. And there are Bollywood strings. Indeed, you will find more Bollywood strings here than anywhere else north of Mumbai. They seem to be Young and producer Steven Lipson's answer to everything. They enliven a leaden Scissor Sisters knock-off called Ain't Such a Bad Place To Be by sticking Bollywood strings on it. Faced with Happiness, an unmemorable bit of Latin fluff, they call in the Bollywood strings. They attempt to remedy the meandering Madness with the surprise application of some Bollywood strings. You rather suspect that if Young and Lipson were asked to do something to help the starving in Darfur, they'd start loading up a plane with sarangis and dilrubas.
Keep On starts out interesting and ends up making you feel like you're trapped with Will Young in the lavatory of a restaurant called the Maharajah. There are clearly millions of people in Britain who would consider the latter state of affairs a delight. They will be getting Keep On for Christmas. As anyone who happened to be in Covent Garden yesterday evening will attest, they could be getting something much worse.
UKMix - Source
I've never been Will Young's biggest fan, but after hearing his current single, "Switch It On", I decided to check out his new album. Working with Rachel Stevens cohort Cathy Dennis, ex-Alisha's Attic member Karen Poole and critically acclaimed Nitin Sawhney, "Keep On" seems like it could be Young's finest work to date.
Fans of "Leave Right Now" can engross themselves in the gorgeous next single "All Time Love". Then there is a lilting, summery cover of "Happiness", the brilliant "Ain't Such A Bad Place To Be" and the haunting "Who Am I".
Overall, this is a great pop album, which proves variety is the spice of life for Will, and with an album this good he could continue to become a long standing recording artist in this country.
Alex MacGregor
Anyone who happened to be in Covent Garden yesterday evening may have received a nasty shock. X Factor runners-up G4 were there too, regaling people with selections from their forthcoming album. While you're pondering what sort of world it is in which Londoners can't shop without being molested by a gormless operatic man-band singing Coldplay's Yellow, it's worth noting that G4's rise offers a lesson in the benefits of hindsight. In 2002, Pop Idol winner Will Young released his debut album, From Now On. Some critical voices (alas, including this one) suggested that with its dismal version of the Doors' Light My Fire, a definitive nadir had been reached in TV talent-show pop. Rash scarcely begins to cover this judgment.
Three years on, how majestic Young's cover of Light My Fire sounds when compared with, say, G4's unprovoked assault on Radiohead's Creep. How needlessly vicious one was about Young's abilities as an interpreter of popular song, knowing nothing of David Sneddon, or Michelle McManus, or indeed Steve Brookstein's version of Yah Moh B There. How mean it was to suggest he sang with all the passion of a taped message saying your call is important to us and may be recorded for training purposes, when just around the corner lurked the massed ranks of Pop Idol finalists putting the boot into Happy Xmas (War Is Over).
No wonder Young has gone from strength to strength, avoiding the ghastly fate of fellow finalist Gareth Gates, who hurtled to commercial oblivion, pausing only to have his virginity snatched by Jordan en route. Instead, Young's second album, Friday's Child, went five times platinum and he has embarked on a successful acting career.
Despite early appearances to the contrary, Young possesses one character trait lacking in his fellow Pop Idols and X Factorites: a personality. And, initially at least, his third album suggests that personality is getting stronger all the time. Keep On's opening title track offers a peculiar and winning combination of electro breakbeat, Chic-y funk guitars, and Bacharach-ish interludes, heavy on the muted trumpets. More characterful still is the lyric, which concerns itself, explicitly, with the business end of the love that dare not speak its name: "You know I'm going to ride it, I won't hide it," pants Young. "Hey, I'm coming!" Obviously, there's no reason why Young shouldn't write a song like this - he's an out gay man whose current video plays on Top Gun's unwitting homoeroticism - but arriving so soon after Jamie Cullum's knickers-off anthem Get Your Way, it leaves you wondering what sexual curveball the housewife's favourites will throw next. Perhaps James Blunt will write a doe-eyed piano ballad about coprophilia.
If not as striking as this first track, Switch It On still implies Young is willing to chance his arm artistically. It has a walloping Bo Diddley hambone rhythm, distorted vocals, frantic harmonica and no tune whatsoever: if nothing else, it's a brave choice as a single. All I Want, meanwhile, is genuinely brilliant, a great song overlaid with falsetto vocals and sinister, echoing slide guitars that hint - wildly improbable as this sounds - at Syd Barrett-era Pink Floyd.
Elsewhere, however, things turn towards the middle of the road. There are a couple of squelchy ballads in the Leave Right Now vein, and two songs that sound like You're Beautiful - Young is clearly unwilling to secede his mumsy fanbase to Posh Boy Jim without a dust-up. And there are Bollywood strings. Indeed, you will find more Bollywood strings here than anywhere else north of Mumbai. They seem to be Young and producer Steven Lipson's answer to everything. They enliven a leaden Scissor Sisters knock-off called Ain't Such a Bad Place To Be by sticking Bollywood strings on it. Faced with Happiness, an unmemorable bit of Latin fluff, they call in the Bollywood strings. They attempt to remedy the meandering Madness with the surprise application of some Bollywood strings. You rather suspect that if Young and Lipson were asked to do something to help the starving in Darfur, they'd start loading up a plane with sarangis and dilrubas.
Keep On starts out interesting and ends up making you feel like you're trapped with Will Young in the lavatory of a restaurant called the Maharajah. There are clearly millions of people in Britain who would consider the latter state of affairs a delight. They will be getting Keep On for Christmas. As anyone who happened to be in Covent Garden yesterday evening will attest, they could be getting something much worse.
UKMix - Source
I've never been Will Young's biggest fan, but after hearing his current single, "Switch It On", I decided to check out his new album. Working with Rachel Stevens cohort Cathy Dennis, ex-Alisha's Attic member Karen Poole and critically acclaimed Nitin Sawhney, "Keep On" seems like it could be Young's finest work to date.
Fans of "Leave Right Now" can engross themselves in the gorgeous next single "All Time Love". Then there is a lilting, summery cover of "Happiness", the brilliant "Ain't Such A Bad Place To Be" and the haunting "Who Am I".
Overall, this is a great pop album, which proves variety is the spice of life for Will, and with an album this good he could continue to become a long standing recording artist in this country.
Alex MacGregor