How Years & Years Of Hookups Led Olly Alexander To Make Night Call

“I didn’t feel connected to it, and it just didn’t hit right,” he says. “I didn’t figure any of that stuff out, by the way.”Alexander’s sexuality has always been present in his music, but Night Call cuts including its title track, “20 Minutes,” and “Muscles” are laden with intimate details of his erotic outings — a far cry from the first time he used masculine pronouns to reference a lover on 2014’s “Real,” an early single. “I really wanted to put that into my own music, and be that bold in whatever way I want to be.”The immense impact such tracks can have on shaping the views of Alexander’s queer listeners, especially young ones, isn’t lost on the performer. Desire is inherently full of conflict,” he says, knowing the album will likely mark some of his fans’ first times hearing about gay relationships and sexual encounters in a positive light. I want to be as queer as possible in anything I do, and if I think it’s gonna be fun, then I’ll do it,” he says of accepting recent opportunities to host BBC’s slightly controversial 2022 New Year’s Eve special and collaborate with “the angel of [his] life” — Kylie Minogue — on a remix of lead single “Starstruck” and bonus track “A Second to Midnight.” (“Nothing can go wrong when Kylie is there.