Years and Years - All for you

Why did it took that long for pop music to reach the point it just achieved in 2018? With David Bowie, Prince and Freddy Mercury transgressing gender and sexual stereotypes in the 70's and 80's, their successors shied away of the queerness that inhabited pop as an art style since the Warholian era. It was common for pop artists in the 90s and 00s to disguise their identities for marketing reasons, and creating them a plain heteronormative image that blurred them with any teen idol or boyband of the moment. In between closeted Ricky Martin or Lance Bass and fake lesbianism by T.A.T.U. or Katy Perry, commercial pop did more disservice to queerness than good.

Cut to 2018, when Janelle Monáe has done a masterpiece album about being queer and black, and Troye Sivan is getting played on commercial radio with a song with heavy references to homosexual sex. It is now Years and Years who go bolder in their image and their sound, and craft an album called "Palo Santo", Spanish for Holy Wood (yes, that's a sexual pun very intended), that is open and upfront confrontational about queer desire and emotions. If in Communion, Olly Alexander was a shy guy trying to find his space in the dancefloor, in Palo Santo he is commanding the entire club with an attitude that demands attention and respect, unapologetically queer and sparkling with raw intensity.

All For You takes where their 2013 hit King left, a guy abused and controlled by his boyfriend realizing all the damage that has been done to him in that blind adoration. "Kneeling at your temple love was accidental", Alexander keeps using religious images to desacralize myths of conventional love: blind devotion is no good whether it is to a God or to a human being. It is a moment of internal pain, but just like Robyn, Years and Years share that idea that dancing on your own until your body can't take it any more is as effective to exorcize your demons as a session of screaming to your pillow.

If the album as a whole is more sophisticated and diverse in ideas that its predecessor, with All For You the band confirms that they are here mainly to make us dance with frenetic electro pop. Greg Kurstin knows pop well enough to guide them to new paths while retaining the essence of what make them successful on the first place. The reason why Years and Years is making some of the best commercial pop right now is because instead of copying what manufactured succesful celebrities have been doing for the last two decades, they are getting the best from those who kept guarding the queer front of pop music in the sidelines of stardom; if your icons to look after are Pet Shop Boys and Scissor Sisters, you have better chances to do it right than if they were Britney Spears and Justin Bieber.