"Leave Right Now" is a song written by Eg White and performed by Will Young. It appears on Will Young's second album, Friday's Child and was released as the first single from that album. The song also appears on the international version of Young's third album, Keep On. The song is reportedly about unrequited love. White was awarded the Ivor Novello Award for Best Song Musically and Lyrically for "Leave Right Now" in 2004. "Leave Right Now" was the exit song for the ninth season of American Idol. Young performed it on the penultimate episode to accompany a video montage recapping the season.
Music video
The video, which has no transitions, features Young at a party where a fight starts and he gets caught up in it. The video also features actress Kelly Wenham as one of the party guests.
Critical reception
Stylus Magazine, who were mostly mixed to negative for Young's previous number ones, rated "Leave Right Now" with 9/10, saying "Better. Much, much better. By this time Will was comfortable as a popstar, prepared to add a little WTF to his videos, and had his style down pat: jacket and jeans rocked to a level not seen since Lovejoy and Tinker were bossing things in the late 80s. He had songs to match as well: “Leave Right Now” is just one of the most English songs ever, which is understandable: what could be more English than a privately educated homosexual? The guy's a moderate genius—Dido with testicles and a heart." In 2007, Freaky Trigger ranked the song at number 54 in their list of the "Top 100 Songs of All Time," with critic Pete Baran calling it "one of the ballsiest songs of the noughties." In 2020 the Guardian rated Leave Right Now as the 74th Greatest UK Number 1 of all time.
Commercial performance
The single went to number one in the UK Singles Chart for two weeks, selling 117,700 in its first week of release, and making it Young's fourth number one single overall. The song has sold 540,000 copies in the UK according to the Official UK Charts Company. In Ireland, it was the Christmas number one single; however, it peaked too soon in the UK to contend for the Christmas number-one there. The song has sold 50,000 copies in the US according to Billboard, with 32,000 of those occurring the week he performed on American Idol.
It was covered in French by Pierrick Lilliu as "La même erreur" on his 2005 debut album, Besoin d'espace. Earlier that year, Lilliu was a runner-up in the French reality show, Nouvelle Star. The show is an analogue to the UK's Pop Idol, which launched Will Young's career. It was parodied in Ireland by Mario Rosenstock for the radio show Gift Grub, whose identically titled version poked fun at Roy Keane's controversial departure from Manchester United and his falling-out with Alex Ferguson. Rosenstock's version also reached number one on the Irish Christmas charts. In 2005, The O.C. actor Peter Gallagher recorded a version for his album , released on 8 November 2005. In 2013, Australian artist Anthony Callea recorded a version for his album, Thirty.
