Olly Alexander up for a ‘Boy Is Mine’-style duet with Troye Sivan
UPDATE: Seems Olly’s up for it. After we tweeted out this story on the weekend, he sent us the following response:
We are very much here for a gay version of The Boy Is Mine (and you’re right Olly, that pic of you is from the Years & Years Facebook page – and we think you look great). Here’s our original story…
YouTuber and rising popstar Troye Sivan has said he’d be up for collaborating with Olly Alexander on a rare male-on-male duet, which – let’s face it – would probably be of at least a 9/10 standard.
Speaking to PopJustice, the 20-year-old – whose new EP WILD was released this week – said he’d want to write a new ballad with the Years & Years frontman rather than cover an existing tune.
When asked if he’d record with the ‘King’ hitmaker, he said: “Well I think that would be really cool. I think our voices would sound nice together. He’s really nice, too. I love him… I’d want to hang out with him. A lot.
“I think we’d have to write something new. A nice pop ballad would be really good. A GAY BALLAD. There’s not many romantic male-on-male duets.”
Asked what makes a gay ballad different from a straight ballad, he quipped: “It would be the exact same, just with two boys singing it.”
On the decision to sign with a major label despite already having a huge following online, he explained: “I felt like I couldn’t do everything I wanted to do without a major label. There are totally artists who can — if you know your dream producer, you know your sound, you know who you want to work with then go for it, make it in your bedroom and just upload it. You’ll make a lot more money than if you sign to a major! But I didn’t know how it worked.
“I wanted to be put in with producers and I wanted to have enough money to make music videos and to have money for marketing campaigns that go beyond my social accounts… And I’ve been lucky because they’ve been, like, ‘do what you want to do, come to us when it’s ready and we’ll do our stuff’.”
Troye boasts over 3.5 million YouTube subscribers and 2.8 million Twitter followers. His EP TRXYE hit the Top 5 in the US last year, and WILD is currently in the iTunes Top 5 on both sides of the Atlantic. It’s No1 in his native Australia.