Lexicon

“Yes! That’s it! They’re luxurious pop songs.” Will Young and Apple Music have reached an agreement on how best to describe Lexicon’s 12 tracks. “I’m stealing that.” The singer/actor/podcaster's seventh studio album arrives four years after 85% Proof and after periods of challenging mental health. “Having been so ill, I really didn't think that pop was going to be something that I was really going do again,” he says. “But I surrounded myself with people I love and people I trust. And you need a bit of fight. I feel like what I've gone through personally, it's a kind of success story.” Young decided to open up the album to a fleet of songwriters and truly enjoy being a singer. “About 15 years ago, you were dismissed as an artist if you didn’t write every line,” he says. “You were a pop puppet. The artistry of singing became immaterial in pop. This album celebrates that—and celebrates the team that worked on the record together.” Explore Lexicon’s team effort with Young’s track-by-track guide. “All the Songs” “I do a podcast called Homo Sapiens with my friend [and filmmaker] Chris Sweeney, and he called this song ‘melancholic pop’. I love that dichotomy of an upbeat song but with a very sad lyric. It's unashamedly a pop song. The chorus lyric is mentioned lots of times. It's fully embracing what a pop song should be.” “My Love” “Straight onto the dance floor for this one. I like how it suggests me desperately trying to woo someone back by performing some sort of crap dance moves. I feel like we might be at a wedding. There might be a sort of square, light-up disco dance floor somewhere there.” “Scars” “I think the lyric is beautiful—talking about how we become attached to people and addicted to people. There's a sadness to that, because I don't know if there's a resolution in this song.” “Get Me Dancing” “I've worked with Eg White for 16 years. He wrote ‘Leave Right Now’. He basically gave me a career. Sometimes you just find people where you just click creatively