Will Young – ‘Leave Right Now’

20 December 2003

The male TV talent show stars of 2002-03—Will Young and Gareth Gates in the UK, Mickey Joe Harte and Simon Casey here in Ireland—were a homogenous bunch: mild-mannered, boyish, with similar spiky haircuts and blazer-over-bootcut-jeans dress sense. If that profile sounds familiar, then yes, they were a sort of applied Westlife – more individual personality, but touting the same line of mainstream milquetoast R&B-pop ballads.

I should clarify that ‘Leave Right Now’, the biggest hit single from this wave of British and Irish talent show talent, is better by a long chalk than any Westlife offering. Yes, it shuffles meekly along on uninspiring shop-worn acoustica, and lyrically it’s about rejecting the thrill-fuelled risk of diving heart-first into a love affair – the sensible, boring antithesis of pop music. In other words, it’s very Westlife.

However, the calling card of ‘Leave Right Now’ is that expertly-crafted swelling chorus, injecting soap-style heightened personal melodrama to a sentiment—“deeper” as all-purpose emotional signifier—of vague, breezy blandness. Will Young has a more worldly air about him than Gareth Gates to carry such a big moment. Overall, though, the same Westlife R&B-pop style that made millions of people vote Will is also what limits him from imposing himself on this song, finding other aspects to it, or making it his own. He’s just its affable local delivery driver, lucking onto a drop with a big tip. Whatever the TV talent show roots of its singer, ‘Leave Right Now’ has more of Coronation Street than Top Of The Pops to it.