Olly Alexander has revealed his reignited love affair with his ex has inspired his new album.
The singer, 34, has gushed that getting back together with a former boyfriend has given him ‘a different perspective to write from’ and the result has been his romantic tracks including his Eurovision song Dizzy and recent single When We Kiss.
Explaining his fresh lyrical direction on his new album Polari, Olly told Attitude: ‘The reason for that is very simple. It’s because I got back together with my partner.’
‘We were together, like, 10 years ago; we dated for a year and then broke up. We didn’t speak for a few years and ended up coming back together.’
‘So, this idea of returning to love was really on my mind. I had all these different points of this relationship that had gone up and down.’
The star added: ‘Now we’re in a very domestic, grown-up relationship. I’ve never experienced that before. I felt like I had a bit of a different perspective to write from.’
Olly Alexander has revealed his reignited love affair with his ex has inspired his new album
Olly, who has not named his boyfriend, was previously in a relationship with fellow musician and Clean Bandit star Neil Milan Amin-Smith.
The couple split up in 2015 due to scheduling conflicts.
At the time, he told Attitude: ‘We’ve had less and less time to spend together and the time we did have together were such short periods it put so much pressure on our relationship.’
Then in 2022 Olly said he was smitten with a mystery man, revealing he was in love after ‘a pandemic rekindle’ with someone from his past.
Speaking on Charli XCX’s Best Song Ever podcast, he spilled at the time that he ‘was single for quite a while.’
He admitted that he finds it harder to ‘trust’ people because it’s difficult for him to have any sort of anonymity – while he also struggled to form intimate relationships.
‘I was lacking a lot of things in my life like fun and connections with strangers, sex, intimacy in general.
The singer, 34, has gushed that getting back together with a former boyfriend has given him ‘a different perspective to write from’ and the result has been his romantic tracks
Olly, who has not named his boyfriend, was previously in a relationship with fellow musician and Clean Bandit star Neil Milan Amin-Smith
‘[The songs talk about how] a hook-up could be the most transcendent, beautiful experience. I felt like it was just something that I couldn’t experience any more in my life for different reasons.
‘Trusting people became harder . . . there are definitely places in the world where I’m anonymous, but it can feel like that’s sort of taken away from you.
‘It was almost getting into character and saying things that I would never have said in real life. Just pushing this more confident part of my personality.’
