Years & Years return to the scene with new single ‘Sanctify’
Years & Years had a glorious breakthrough in 2015 when their single ‘King’ became a huge hit around large parts of Europe. The three piece consisting of Olly Alexander, Mikey Goldsworthy and Emre Türkmen released their debut album Communion the same year and went on an extensive club and festival tour to promote the hell out of that record. They delivered the track ‘Meteorite’ for the Bridget Jones’s Baby soundtrack and after that they disappeared off our radar for a while. Now Years & Years are back for the next chapter. ‘Sanctify’ is the first single of their sophomore album, which will be out this year.

‘Sanctify’ is a natural progression of the sound of their debut, but with a darker twist. The catchy synth pop is still there, but the beats lean towards hiphop a bit more this time around. “Sanctify my body with pain”, Olly sings in the chorus that might not be as instant as ‘King’, ‘Shine’ or ‘Desire’ was, but still goes off. The production is flawless and Olly’s tender vocal style does convince on this ‘take me to church’ kind of tune too. I am not sure this will do as well commercially as their previous material, but at least they managed to shake things up a little while staying true to what their niche is.

The video is set in a future society where androids have taken over and use humans for entertainment. Olly is one of these humans they find and he performs a rather eye catching piece of choreography with… a chair! Werk it! This day and age needs pop stars like Olly (and Troye Sivan of course) who don’t feel the need to tone themselves down in the way they express themselves, even if this means it is not exactly following the lines of mainstream gender norms (whatever that might mean anyway). The storyline indicates that there will be a part two. Olly said on Radio 1 that the album is supposed to be out in Summer. Colour me excited!