We are very happy to have the first gay press cover shoot with Olly Alexander this month. Unless you’ve been living under a rock this year then you’ll know him as the singer of the excellent pop outfit Years and Years who have produced some of the catchiest radio tunes of the year, with King and Shine being never (and I mean never) off the Attitude speakers.
Olly is his own moment in pop culture. He’s as cute as a button and has a gorgeous, warm stage presence and a really lovely pop voice. His music is catchy electronica. There have been many comparisons made with the Pet Shop Boys. He kissed his boyfriend on festival stages. The crowd loved it. It’s not a big deal. And this is also one of the most pleasing things about him: Olly is a guy who typifies the attitudes of so many young people in that his sexuality is no big deal, not to be explained or discussed much, it just is. Just as it should be. It doesn’t define him but that doesn’t mean he shies away from it and acts like it isn’t a significant part of who he is. Olly sings about boys in the songs Memo and Real and it is really, really refreshing. Over the last year his relationship with fellow popstar Neil Amin-Smith from Clean Bandit, for whom the hit Shine was written about, was covered in the media, making them one of the only visible young gay couples that the country has to read about in the hallowed pages of MailOnline. If you stop to think, it’s still shocking how few visible gay couples there are in the public eye. (That’s one reason why I’m very happy that Attitude has its ‘Truly Madly Deeply’ page. There is literally no other place in the world where you can see gay couples represented with such regularity). Olly casually lets it be known in our interview that he and Neil are no longer together. Sad. But that’s life. It is a beautiful thing that it can be part of the general national dialogue at all, if that makes sense. So, Olly Alexander (and Neil as well, FYI), we bloody well love you. I always get particularly excited – sucker that I am – when we get someone like him on the cover of Attitude.