Olly Alexander Gets Candid on Years & Years's Second Album
Underneath his sparkling outfits and stratospheric pop songs, Olly Alexander is an unassuming star. Tentative, awkward, and self-deprecating in person, he saunters into the coffee shop in East London where we agree to meet. “You’re not going to ask me about Russia or anything, are you?” the 27-year-old frontman of Years & Years jokes as he sits down, ruffling his new head of beet-red hair and fumbling with the sleeves on his T-shirt.
Not quite. Instead, we’re here to discuss the moment pop music fans the world over have been waiting for. Years & Years’ forthcoming album, Palo Santo, is the British group’s followup to the wildly successful debut Communion, which sold over a million copies worldwide and transformed Olly into an overnight queer pop favorite. This time around, the list of people they’re working with includes Greg Kurstin, Julia Michaels, and Justin Tranter—a trio of writers who have previously spun pop sounds into solid gold for the likes of Adele and Justin Bieber.
[Olly wears jumpsuit Boss, shirt Amiri, t-shirt Burberry, socks American Apparel, sneakers Puma, jewelry Olly’s own]
