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Kevin Kwong

It starts off as a gentle gurgle then develops into a loud wail. Someone on the other end of the line is losing patience - and it is not British singer and song-writer Paul Young.

'Can you hear them?' the 40-year-old asks as a baby screams for her mother. Then comes the sound of Young (father of Levi, Layla and new-born son Grady) cooing.

This is Paul Young a decade after his debut smash hit Wherever I Lay My Hat and the pop classic Everytime You Go Away. This is also a Paul Young who has grown out of his 'white soul boy' image.

In fact, the popster looks so different he jokes about re-introducing himself when he comes to Hong Kong next month as a guest artist on the Heineken Music Horizon bill.

Others taking part include Jacky Cheung Hok-yau, American rhythm and blues group All-4-One, the Queensland Philharmonic Orchestra and violinist Vanessa-Mae.

'I will have to introduce myself to everybody again because I look different,' Young says from his home in north London.

'It is a shame the new album is not out but I would like to have done some of the new material because it is really good fun. But I don't mind doing the old stuff.' Young's latest album, as yet untitled, is due for release next year though 'the music is all there'.

 So why the delay? 'We didn't want to get caught in a stampede for Christmas. It is more a summer album, so it should have been out this summer or in August. But we just got late,' says Young. 'However, we will have a single out in January and the album in March.' Produced by Greg Penny, who has worked with singer k d lang, the album is the first to be released under the East West label, and second after he left Sony Music in 1994.

'In the new album, I'm a lot less interested in the soul aspect of it. It has got a lot more acoustic and uses a lot of harmony. For me, the label of being a white soul boy was something I didn't really like,' Young says.

'With the new music, the emphasis is less on my voice and more on the sound as the whole.' Lyrics-wise, Young has also taken a new dimension. He explains: 'I'm pretty settled now, so I don't intend to write about relationships as such. But I am a big fan of movies . . . so I tend to either get the idea from a movie or I write a song as though it is a movie.' His change in music style and direction is understandable. After all, they grow with the artist. However, in Young's case, this progress was thwarted, rather than fostered, by his old record company. This also explains his acrimonious relationship with Sony Music.

'As time goes on, the [music] industry gets stronger and stronger and I think it is really hard for bands now to keep control of what they are doing,' Young says.

'There is this tremendous pressure to keep coming up with hits and the same stuff instead of growth as an artist. George Michael suffered under Sony and so did Terence Trent D'arby.' According to Young, who was a Sony Music contract artist for more than a decade, the company is so big that its focus was more on chasing after the dollars than musical creativity and talent.

'The music business is just more and more getting it down on fact sheets and accounts, and that is what the people at the top want to see. There was a time when the president of the record company was the top guy; now he's got to answer to somebody who in turn defers to somebody else.

'That means the further away it gets, the less human the music business is. It is all about facts and figures. So George Michael's problem was that he wasn't being allowed to mature as an artist.' Nor was Young. Indeed, since be broke into the British music scene with his debut album No Parlez in 1983, his last sizeable chart hit was Oh Girl (in 1990) and the album The Crossing in 1993.

'Where I probably disappear in your eye is because I was having problems with Sony. I gave them another good album called The Crossing after the greatest hits album From Time to Time, which I thought was the new direction to go,' Young says. 'But the producer still made me go in and record songs using drum machines and make them sound like lightweight pop music because that's what they want Paul Young to be.

'And after that, we just started arguing with the record company a lot until eventually they let me go.' But with his new work, influenced by British music today, it is 'getting back to songs again - and I can write songs again'.

The Heineken Music Horizon event will bring Young back to the territory where he first staged a concert in 1986. He has also toured Japan, Taiwan and Thailand.

However, Europe remains his biggest market and major tour venue. Being close to his family is also a plus. Young admits getting married (his wife is model Stacey Young) and having children has changed his outlook on life.

'It has made me a lot more confident about where I'm going. I think it brought it home to me that I'm 10 years older and I wish the old record company could have realised that,' he says.

'Thankfully, the new record company does. When I went to them with a very different kind of music, they liked it. I thought that was their strength, the fact they are taking on an old established artist, who's matured.

'They also don't want me to be what I was 10 years ago so I'm very pleased about that. But that confidence has come from having a family.' Paul Young, Heineken Music Horizon, October 26-27 at the Coliseum 



Singing for young at heart