It’s widely accepted that most pop songs are written about the artists’ own experiences of love and sex, yet it’s not often you come across a song using gay pronouns, even when sung by a gay singer. That’s something Olly Alexander, frontman of Years & Years, wants to change. Two songs – Real and Memo – off their debut album, Communion (out today!), contain gender specific references that identify the person he’s singing about as male.
In an interview with Digital Spy, Alexander, who’s boyfriend is Clean Bandit’s Neil Mila, said, “It is kind of sad to me that we don’t have gay popstars singing about men using a male pronoun, but that could change hopefully,” before going on to say, “I’d like to hear a gay artist express their sexuality in a really open way. That’s something I’ve sort of tried to do a little bit on this album, but to be able to talk about sex is possibly new for gay artists, so I’d like to see that in the mainstream… music does feel like it’s in a much more accepted, tolerant place; even with Miley Cyrus, when she doesn’t identify with either gender, and we’re getting used to these ideas of about non-binary gender, which is a good thing.”
Alexander ends the interview on a standing that anyone with any sort of platform from which they can make change, should take note from: “I also believe if you want the world to change, or you want to see social change, you have to be an embodiment of it, so I am 100% for pushing equality and equal rights always. I guess that is as much part of the agenda as the music is really, because it’s just who I am.”