Olly Alexander has said that Years & Years‘ upcoming new album was inspired by “hookups” and the clubbing scene, and served as an “escape” from the struggles of the past two years.
Years & Years, which is now an Alexander solo project, will release their third record ‘Night Call’ on January 7, 2022 via Polydor. It’s been previewed by the singles ‘Starstruck’, ‘Sweet Talker’ and ‘Crave’.
During a recent interview with Zane Lowe on Apple Music 1, Alexander explained that becoming a solo artist and making an album throughout the coronavirus pandemic had “been challenging”.
“But it was like my escape,” he continued. “So I put all the kind of stuff I was missing, like going out, dancing, having sex. [I] just put it all into the record.
“And it’s just such a good feeling because you never know when something’s going to be finished, if you’re ever going to put it out. But it’s coming out.”
As for deciding on the record’s title, the singer said: “So it was an album that I imagined being played at nighttime. And then I was thinking of really other terms for hookups. And ‘Night Call’… it pleased me because I felt like it worked on lots of different levels.
“It just felt like something that would… it was a little mysterious, but it felt sexy as well.”
He went on to say that the track ‘Night Call’ came towards the end of the writing process and recording process, adding: “But I knew all these songs, a lot of them about hookups or about kind of encounters at nighttime.”
Although Alexander “tried to keep sadness as far away as possible” on the new album, he explained that some “darker” themes “crept into” two of the tracks.
“There’s one song called ‘Make It Out Alive’, which I wrote before the rest of ‘Night Call’, but I love the song and really wanted to keep it in,” he said.
“That was from a much darker place where I was just [like], ‘Wow, things are really feeling a bit tough’. And then another one of the songs called ‘See You Again’ really just came from after my gran died. I was, ‘Oh, I’d love to see her again’.”
Olly Alexander recently teased a “sneaky” forthcoming collaboration, which he described as being “in the dance music world”. It’ll follow on from ‘A Second To Midnight’, his team-up with Kylie Minogue.
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