Years & Years Return With New Single "Sanctify"
Sanctify is a bold leap forward in sound and vision from Years & Years, a band intuitively connected to great, homespun British pop classicism, but now standing bolt upright on the world stage. If there is a ghostly shadow sitting over the Minneapolitan strut of Sanctify, it is arguably that of 13-year-old Olly Alexander listening to Britney’s ‘Slave 4 U’ his bedroom, playing back the experience at full adult pop throttle. Their second album, thrillingly, also marks a new frontier in every sense of the world, as Olly explains…
I want to take people on a wild and wonderful adventure through my dreams to a world that’s very different from our own. I’ve been thinking about this place for a long time, a place to tell stories from; about identity, sexuality, celebrity and performance. The video for ‘Sanctify’ centres around an audition against the backdrop of a future metropolis called Palo Santo. It’s the first part of a bigger jigsaw puzzle and my hope is that it confuses the hell out of people but also excites them in a mysterious and sensual way. We’ve deliberately hidden lots of different meanings and I want people to come up with their own interpretations, I’m asking people to jump down the rabbit hole with me and let their imagination run free. The thing I love most about pop music has always been fantasy and escapism so I thought, ‘well I guess I should try and be the pop star I want to see in the world and make the most ambitious and freaky and sexy thing possible’. I’m making these videos because I want to let people inside my brain and because I love living in my own fantasy world (always have, always will) - a place where sexuality and gender are blurred and magic is real. We live in a chaotic and accelerating world, we’re looking at depictions of the future to help us make sense of what’s happening right now. This is my vision of a possible future, one that makes us question what it means to be a human.
Sanctify is taken from the British trio's forthcoming sophomore album set to come out this summer. It is the follow up to their No. 1 album Communion, released in 2015 which scored 4 platinum singles, 5 BRIT Award nominations, and concluded with a sold-out date at Wembley Arena.