Paul Young

Who was Paul Young?

Paul Young was an English singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist. Young initially came to prominence as the frontman of 1970s rock band Sad Café, with whom he achieved multiple UK Top 40 and US Billboard Hot 100 hits. He later enjoyed greater chart success sharing lead vocal duties with Paul Carrack in Mike + The Mechanics, the pop-rock band formed in 1985 by Genesis guitarist Mike Rutherford. In that band, Young would play various instruments as required, and serve as de facto frontman during live performances. During his career, he provided lead vocals on several chart hits, including Sad Café's "Every Day Hurts" and "My Oh My", and Mike + The Mechanics' "All I Need Is a Miracle", "Word of Mouth", "Taken In" and "Nobody's Perfect".

Young possessed a wide vocal range, often utilising fifth octave head voice notes, and a voice characterised as "rich". His early style has been likened to that of Mick Jagger; in the early 1980s, he began to explore a more emotive, often-breathy style. Rutherford said of Young, "He had a fantastic voice, one of the best rock voices of his generation...a complete natural." Former Marillion vocalist and 1980s chart peer, Fish, described him as "one of the finest frontmen and singers from the history of the British music scene", who exhibited "immense personality, glowing charisma and outrageous positivism."