28 Aug 2008
Get a dick, Will!
While treading to my heart’s discontent in the gym yesterday, the TV in front of my treadmill flashed up the video for Will Young’s new single, 'Changes'.
I didn’t have my earphones with me, so I couldn’t listen to the song, and as I watched silent Will go through the motions, something occurred to me…
Although Will Young invariably sings songs that celebrate love, the videos to those songs invariably feature Will looking pretty isolated and alone. The video I was watching has him entirely alone, looking depressed and running away from untold sadness.
‘All Time Love’ features him in a glass booth as people outside it fall in love. 'Leave Right Now' has him desperate to leave a product launch event, and looking desperately alone. 'Light My Fire', a song about sex, has lots of girls hanging out and looking sixties-cool at a garden party, while Will just messes around like a big girl himself.
Will Young is probably the first out and proud music artist in the world to have such a long-term career with such a wide fanbase. So why can’t we see him sing his love songs about the kind of love he’s singing about? Could we not see him look longingly at another man in 'All Time Love'? Even to have him sing 'Who Am I' and have a gay love and loss story in the background would be something, instead of a pallid parody of Blue Peter with Will hamming it up like he’s got no dick.
Anyway, that’s the kind of thing I get to thinking about while going through the mind-numbing routine of gym life. Sad, huh?