John Paul Young

As a child, John Paul Young relocated with his family from Scotland to Australia and swiftly adopted the local accent to escape mockery from schoolmates. Singing with that acquired accent, he appeared in a production of Jesus Christ Superstar before taking the role of lead vocalist for the 1970s rock band Elm Tree. While performing with the group, manager and occasional producer Simon Napier-Bell noticed him and invited him to add an overdub to the track “Pasadena.” Written by Easybeats members Harry Vanda and George Young, the song led the pair to serve as John Paul Young’s songwriters, supplying a series of pop numbers that reached the charts in Australia, Europe, and Asia. Worldwide recognition arrived in the late 1970s, first with the disco single “Standing in the Rain” and then with his signature success, “Love Is in the Air.” John Paul Young credited the latter’s impact to George Young’s guidance, which urged him to deliver the vocal in a relaxed, conversational manner. Later releases either tried, without success, to duplicate the disco approach of “Standing in the Rain” or shifted toward rock, yielding several domestic hits in Australia during the early 1980s. Eventually stepping away from performing to work as a radio DJ, Young returned in 1992 after a version of “Love Is in the Air” appeared on the soundtrack of Baz Luhrmann’s film Strictly Ballroom and reentered the charts. He continued to present his earlier material in concert for the next ten years, among other occasions at the 2000 Sydney Olympics, before reentering the studio in 2006 with Harry Vanda’s Flashpoint Music to cut the album In Too Deep.