Will's New Single: What a rip off!!! (Will Young in general)

Member Name: RobMeister

Product:	Will Young in general
Date:	03/03/02 (207 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Two good Will songs

Disadvantages: Only 2 songs, £3.99, Music Industry taking us for a ride!!!!!!

So, picture the scene. I promise my Mum, an avid watcher of Pop Idol, that I’d get her the new Pop Idol single when it’s released. She was over the moon when Will won the accolade of Pop Idol, perhaps the fact that she voted 25 times spending in total £2.50 in the process contributed to her elation.

Anyway, I’m with her as we go into Tesco’s and see a staff member stacking loads of those little Will singles on the shelf. Without much thought I reach over and stick it in the basket.

We get home, I’m left with the task of unpacking the shopping as she goes and puts the single on.

Being a bit of a rock fan myself, this single isn’t really something I’d buy for myself. Give me loud guitars any day, but Evergreen and Anything is Possible are not bad songs in their own right. I’d heard them a few times on Pop Idol, something I couldn’t really get away from. I’m glad Will won in the end as I think he did have something a little different to Gareth. They both can sing well but in my eyes Gareth is a one man Westlife band. And if he’d have won he probably would have been marketed as such with dreary, slushy ballads. (sorry to any Westlife fans out there, it’s just my view). Not that Will isn’t being marketed in the same way, as from what I’ve seen from his videos it’s all looking a little formulaic. But I think Will could have the guts to do something different when he establishes himself a bit more.

Will has an edge, a different vibe to him than your average Pop Idol. I think he’ll go far, make a lot of money and fans happy. I do think (hope) once he has made his mark he’ll move away from the Pop malarky and move to different genres of music. He certainly has the voice for it.

So anyway, there I am packing the beans away when I hear Will’s wobbly but impressive voice blast out from the stereo and think to myself, this is
not going to be the last time I hear this. I can stomach most pop songs, in fact I quite like a lot of American pop artists. I just hate to hear them over and over again. And unfortunately with this single that is all you’re going to be doing. As the main rant of this op is how much of a rip off I think this CD single is.

I kind of expected this single to be £3.99 when I bought it, it wouldn’t really be anything less for such an in demand single. What I didn’t expect was it to ONLY have 2 songs on it. If I’d have looked when I picked it up in Tescos it would have gone straight back on the shelf.

I used to buy loads of singles a few years back. They were cheap and cheerful for what I listened too. I slowed down immensely when a new rule was governed that CD singles must be no longer than 20 minutes (or there about) in length and contain no more than 3 music tracks. I think this rule was established by the C.I.N who wanted more control over what was eligible for chart inclusion each week.

What a ridiculous rule, I used to buy every Oasis single that came out because I liked the 3 b-sides they would include. Now because of this rule we only get 2 extra songs but still pay £3.99. Dance music is also seriously effected by this rule as they have to butcher the songs in order to get them to the 20 minutes running time. As any dance fan knows, the length of the song is vital in building up tempo and melody which is all but lost on this stupid C.I.N rule.

Despite what I think of this ruling, I’ve excepted it, but when a single like Will’s comes along it just shows up the greedy and money grabbing tactics of the music industry as this CD single is even worse. Two piddling tracks on one CD single. £1.995 for each song is an outrageous price to pay, it’s no wonder a lot of people resort to finding music off the net via MP3s. Why couldn’t they stick another song on there?, granted I bet they h
ad to press a heck of a lot of CD’s but surely they could have spent the time to come up with more songs when they recorded Evergreen and Anything is possible!!.

And to think a lot of this singles target audience is going to be young girls it’s even more of a joke. I wouldn’t have minded if they’d bothered to put both of his videos on the disc which I see have been getting a lot of air time on channels like The Box and Smash Hits on Sky Digital. It would have provided a little something extra for the money asked.

I really was a little disgusted with this single, not the content, that’s OK and I’ve got a lot of respect for Will, I’m sure he’ll make a great Pop Idol but if these are the tactics we can expect from his marketing team then I guess those hard core fans are in for a serious dent in their pockets in the future. So far our household has spent £6.49 on Will the Pop Idol.

I don’t think I’m going to be the only one slightly miffed at the end result of this Pop Idol rip off. No wonder Simon Cowell has to wear his trousers so high up, it must be to stop his trousers falling down with the amount of change he must have in there.

Grrrrrrrrrrr!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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