Paul Young

I have a real soft spot for Paul Young — the kid from Luton who somehow became one of the smoothest voices of the entire 1980s. After kicking around in short-lived bands like the Q-Tips, he hit the stratosphere as a solo act with "Wherever I Lay My Head," his blue-eyed soul cover that felt more authentic than it had any right to be. Then came "Every Time You Go Away," and honestly, that falsetto break still gives me chills. What I love about him is that he was never trying to be a rock star — he was a genuine soul singer trapped in a pop moment, and he owned it completely. He doesn't get enough credit these days for how effortlessly he bridged British pop and classic American R&B at a time when that crossing was genuinely hard to pull off.

This take was written by generative AI, one per person, from publicly reported facts (editorial policy). It is a reading of the record, not reporting.

Name (English)

Paul Young

Name (Japanese)

ポール・ヤング

Reading

ぽーる・やんぐ

Born

January 17, 1956 (age 70)

Origin

Luton, United Kingdom

Occupation

singer / songwriter / recording artist / musician / composer

Zodiac / Chinese zodiac

Capricorn / Monkey

University

Imperial College London

• Official sitehttps://www.paul-young.com/
• Instagramhttps://www.instagram.com/paulyoungparlez/
• Xhttps://x.com/paulyoungparlez
• Wikipedia (English)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul%20Young
• Wikipedia (Japanese)https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%83%9D%E3%83%BC%E3%83%AB%E3%83%BB%E3%83%A4%E3%83%B3%E3%82%B0
• Wikidatahttps://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q360501

Tags

• singer
• songwriter
• recording artist

Last updated

October 18, 2026

Only publicly available facts are listed; non-public or unconfirmed items are omitted. Base data was compiled from Wikidata from June 2026 onward; ages are recalculated daily and deaths are checked against Wikidata on an ongoing basis. English text is machine-assisted (facts translated by Sonnet, "My Take" written by Opus 4.8). The Japanese page is the source of record.