“Oh, and I won’t, and I wont’, and I won’t be ashamed.”
Years & Years are back with their new single Sanctify, complete with a big-budget music video that may leave fans scratching their heads.
“The video for ‘Sanctify’ centres around an audition against the backdrop of a future metropolis called Palo Santo,” explained frontman Olly Alexander.
“It’s the first part of a bigger jigsaw puzzle and my hope is that it confuses the hell out of people but also excites them in a mysterious and sensual way.”
He added: “We’ve deliberately hidden lots of different meanings and I want people to come up with their own interpretations, I’m asking people to jump down the rabbit hole with me and let their imagination run free.”
Sanctify is the lead single from Years & Years’ forthcoming new album, which serves as the follow-up to their chart-topping debut Communion.
Last year, Olly revealed that at the very start of his career with Years & Years the whole team around them knew he was a gay man, but that they didn’t really feel the need for him to speak openly about it.
“I kind of had one media training session early on with this woman who kind of advised me not to come out,” Olly admitted. “‘You don’t need to – you don’t need to make it a big deal. Why should you have to express your sexuality?’
“I can see where she was coming from, and I understand why that might have been the norm to tell musicians in the past.
“After a certain point I realised I was getting this real anxiety and stress from worrying about what interviewers might ask me. I felt like all the music was about me and my identity, so it didn’t make any sense for me to not talk about this.”
Olly added: “I made the decision – it did feel like a bit of a choice – really, really early on that I’m just going to be out as much as possible.”
Last summer, the singer launched a new LGBTQ documentary, Growing Up Gay, for the BBC, which can be streamed on the iPlayer now.
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