Years & Years haven’t released a single since Olly Alexander debuted as a solo artist with ‘Night Call.’
Years & Years, musician and actor Olly Alexander’s solo pop act, is no stranger to heartbreak in all of its forms. It’s that knowledge that prepared him for his performance on DJ Regard’s current hit, “Hallucination,” a bouncy club track in which the vocalist warns off chronic heartbreakers.
Years & Years sternly tells his target, “Don’t attempt to dazzle me, I know you’re trying to harm me again / You appear like a vision, but now I’m beginin’ to see through the haze / Don’t be so phony, oh, oh (Oh) / Your love is a hallucination,” letting him know he’s on to his shenanigans.
Night Call, the latest Years & Years record and Alexander’s first full-length CD since the pop duo transitioned from a quartet to a solo act, unwittingly expands on the lyrical and conceptual realm of “Hallucination.” The album, which was mostly influenced by dance music’s escapism, looked at desire through the prism of taking control rather than allowing oneself to be heartbroken.
“In this – in the music – my shadow self emerges. “I’ve been writing a lot of love songs where I felt absolutely stomped and, like, I just wasn’t interested in writing songs like that,” Alexander said of the album to NPR. “I didn’t fall in love like that anymore, and there was a lot of pressure in relationships when I met someone who was so – it was like, what am I going to be?” What are your plans for the future? “How are we going to get through this?” says the narrator.
“I really wanted to just play around with those expectations and write songs where I tried to emphasize having fun in the studio, just portraying this persona who wasn’t scared to be a little bit out there,” he continued.
