Olly Alexander says expressing his sexuality was met with ‘extreme resistance’ and ‘hostility’ from record label
Alexander remarked: "It’s not gone unnoticed that I was much more popular when I was in a band with two straight people”
By Gary Grimes
Olly Alexander has spoken about the pushback he’s received over the course of his career when it’s come to expressing his sexuality in his music and visuals.
Alexander, speaking in an exclusive interview for the latest cover of Attitude, was asked about whether he had noticed that despite the recent surge in popularity for queer female-centric music led by acts like Chappell Roan, boygenius and Billie Eilish, the same interest does not appear to exist for explicitly queer music from men.
“Well,” Alexander says, “it’s not gone unnoticed that I was much more popular when I was in a band with two straight people.”
The former Years & Years frontman was then asked if he’d had to fight to express his sexuality how he wanted over the years, to which he responded: “Yes! When the label saw [the visuals for] Palo Santo, which was Years & Years’ second album, they were like, ‘What the fuck is this?’”
“They didn’t get it,” Alexander continued. “And I don’t need them to get it. But this is the music industry. It’s a fucked up game.”
He went on to explain that he felt he had earned his label’s trust after the huge success of Years & Years’s debut album Communion. “Our debut album had sold millions. I’d recouped for my record label. But I felt like the choices and creative decisions I was making were being met with extreme resistance and, sometimes, some hostility. I suppose, they were thinking that I was about to take a machete to my marketability. But fuck it.”
Elsewhere in the interview, the singer had commented on the criticism his performance at last year’s Eurovision had received from some who felt it was too sexualised. “[People] were so outraged. I expected some pearl-clutching, but I was a bit taken aback by how many pearls were clutched.”
To read Olly’s cover interview in full, check out issue 363 of Attitude magazine, available to order here, and alongside 15 years of back issues on the free Attitude app.
