Olly Alexander feels free after going solo.
Years & Years is now just Olly on his own after founding members Mikey Goldsworthy and Emre Turkmen departed the electropop group this year, and he feels completely reinvigorated to be making music that is purely his vision.
Speaking at this week’s BRIT Awards, he said: “My message to my fans is thank you for supporting me, it just means the world, I love you so much, especially now I’m solo, Years & Years is just me.
“It is a little bit scary, but it’s exciting too, I feel like there’s a whole new energy to it which is nice. I feel free, it’s good.
“There was nerves at first because you don’t know what people are going to think, are they going to be sad, but for us it was the right decision to make. But now I feel happy and excited because it feels as though I have fresh energy and the fans are excited.”
Olly says his new songs are all “up-tempo” dance tunes because that’s the type of music he has been listening to during the COVID-19 pandemic to keep his spirits up.
“I make music according to however I’m feeling at the time, and during the pandemic I was listening to a lot of up-tempo dance music, stuff that made me feel good, so I’ve just put that into my music.”