Paul Young

The sound of Paul Young is anchored in that warm blend of classic soul and eighties pop, where his voice —smooth yet full-bodied— glides over arrangements mixing clean guitars with horn sections. He's not the typical polished English pop singer, but someone who carries the weight of African-American tradition in every phrase, as if blue-eyed soul had chosen him to transmit it unfiltered. His style doesn't seek to imitate the genre's greats, but rather borrows melodies from others and makes them his own, as if he had written them forever. This explains why songs like Wherever I Lay My Hat or Come Back and Stay sound so natural in his voice: he doesn't sing them, he inhabits them.

Paul Young's leap to a solo career was not a bed of roses. After passing through ephemeral bands like Q-Tips —where he played with Dave Lathwell and Baz Watts—, where live energy was the only thing that stood out, success came when he least expected it. His first solo album, No Parlez, took time to take off: the first two singles failed, and even the third, a cover of Marvin Gaye, seemed doomed to oblivion. But when Wherever I Lay My Hat climbed to number one in the UK for three weeks in 1983, it became clear that his voice had something the radio needed.