Nobody really tells you about the everyday reality of being a pop star. Shortly before the release of Night Call – Years & Years’ third album, which captured the restless yearning of two years stuck inside, and shot straight to number one – Olly Alexander got to experience it first hand as he heaved a massive, industrial pallet of records into his building’s lift, and all the way down the long, seemingly unending corridor to his flat.
“The pallet broke in the hallway and thousands of these albums fell out onto the corridor, booklets everywhere,” he says, “and then of course my neighbour came home.” Greeted by the sight of one of the country’s preeminent pop stars wading through an ankle-deep pile of albums – each one bearing an image of Alexander, posing as a merman no less – the neighbour quickly scurried off, while the singer began the undignified task of ferrying each box inside, one by one. “It was amusing to me,” he laughs. “I thought, oh, if only people could see me now.”
