14 January 2022 The Guardian Weekly53
then went back to work, and then came off that, and then
the pandemic felt like it happened straight away. I hadn’t
processed my gran’s death, really. And then I was thinking,
‘ Oh my God, I’m trying to make this pop album. What’s the
point? ... Does anyone need another pop album? Not really.’”
Then he turned 30, in July 2020 , just as the fi rst set of
UK lockdown restrictions began to ease. “Maybe it sounds
a bit silly, but it really felt like quite an achievement, to be- When you’re younger, you don’t ever imagine you’ll
get to 30.” Once he’d passed 25, he started to realise that
he liked himself a bit more. “I was feeling like, ‘OK, maybe
something is working here. I may fi nally be able to be a bit
more at peace with myself and have a more solid founda-
tion’ ... I found the transition from being ‘the young one’
really hard. I was looking at other pop stars who were in
their early 20s, and I was thinking, ‘ Oh my God, I’m ageing
out of this ... Oh no, I’m past it!’”
That feeling has quietened down , and he is much more
comfortable with himself. “I feel so much more at peace
with myself than I ever did,” he nods. “Time helps, you
know.” He pauses, then adds, with a cackle: “And I’ve had
a lot of therapy.”
E
VENTUALLY, Alexander decided that
even if the world didn’t need another
pop album, he was going to make one.
Night Call sounds as if it burst out of
lockdown. There are no slowies, no
ballads, only bangers. “All I wanted to
make was uptempo music you could
dance to in a club,” he says. It’s a tribute
to nightlife and freedom, and the sex that can go with it. “A
lot of the songs are about sex and hookups because it was
something that was absent from my life,” he says, laughing.
He pauses on the edge of saying something, trying to work
out whether he should or not, then decides to jump off. “But
I have to say, um, that I’m lucky that I do have someone that
I like – love, actually – a lot. Who loves me back.” He claps
his hands, joyfully. “So that’s nice! I’ve known him for six,
seven years, I think ... Over the past year, I’ve really leaned
on him a lot. I’m going to be super private about him, but
that’s part of my story, so I have to say it.” So the hookups
you’re singing about on the album are a past life? “No. I
mean, I still hope to hook up again, some day,” he grins.
Night Call is about dancing and shagging and hedonism.
You can practically feel the sticky fl oor underfoot when
you listen to it. “What I love so much about dance music
and disco is that idea of liberation on the dancefl oor. It’s
communal, you come together and feel free, to the beat,”
he says. In some ways, I suggest, it feels like a companion
piece to It’s a Sin. “Defi nitely ,” he says.
Russell T Davies , who wrote and created It’s a Sin, says
he only auditioned one actor for the part of Ritchie, and that
was Alexander. Davies is about to return to Doctor Who as
its showrunner, but before that was announced, Alexan-
der found himself on the front page of the Sun, being
announced as the new Doctor. How did that happen?the best thing for us, to go our separate ways, rather than
try to make it work.”
Which diff erent directions had you all started to go in?
“Well, I love pop music. I wanted us to play our song on
The X Factor, for instance. Not that that ever happened –
we didn’t get booked. But that was a huge issue within the
group, because that felt like it would be too pop, and that
being on TV like that was kind of lame.” There were the
familiar “musical diff erences” , too. “ After the fi rst album,
we never felt good about anything as a band. That’s when
it all started, really.” He says he was proud of Palo Santo.
“But it was not loved by everyone in the band, and that was
hard for me.” The three of them still got on well enough to
go on tour and have a good time, he says. But it sounds as
if the split wasn’t a huge surprise.
Around the time that Years & Years w ere coming apart,
he was making It’s a Sin in Manchester. It was an experience
he loved, but one that was, he says, incredibly intense. For
one thing, during a short break in fi lming, over Christmas
2019, his grandmother Rosemarie died. She had been a
singer in her youth: she was a chorus girl who went to New
York to perform and had a few leading roles on stage. They
were extremely close. “I was with her when she died, and
I crave alone time. But having
all of it in one go was just ...
it was quite overwhelming