Olly Alexander’s Polari: a neon-lit debut that rewires 80s pop codes for 2025
At a glance Artist/album: Olly Alexander — Polari (2025, Polydor)
What it is: The first LP under Alexander’s own name after three Years & Years records
Core collaborators: Executive producer Danny L Harle; guest production from Vince Clarke
File under: Hi-NRG revival, Italo hints, glossy synth-pop with queer club DNA
Context: from Years & Years to going it alone
After a decade fronting Years & Years, Olly Alexander steps into a new chapter bearing only his name. The timing matters. Night Call (2022) kept him in the charts but didn’t hit like the earlier band albums, and Eurovision 2024 put him under a searchlight few artists truly enjoy. Polari arrives as both statement and reset: a pop record that treats the dancefloor as a place to figure things out in public.
Why “Polari”?
The title nods to a once-covert slang with roots across dialects, used in parts of British queer life when speaking plainly could be dangerous. It’s a perfect banner for a record obsessed with codes—how we signal, hide, flirt, and reveal. There’s a second meaning, too: the word’s astral ring evokes Polaris, the guiding star. Polari positions itself as both language and lighthouse.
The sound: 80s circuitry, 2025 shine
Danny L Harle supervises a high-gloss suite of 13 tracks that draw on the pop-industrial engine room of the late 1980s: the efficient hooks of Stock Aitken Waterman, Pet Shop Boys’ wistful cool, Erasure’s romantic voltage, Janet Jackson’s precision, George Michael’s sheen. Drums stomp four-to-the-floor, basslines glide, and synths snap with sampler-era drama. The palette is deliberately “too much” in places—bright, blunt, a little gaudy—because that’s the point: to restore the sense of pop as theatre.
A special cameo underlines the lineage. Vince Clarke—architect of Depeche Mode’s beginnings and half of Yazoo and Erasure—hands over a production bed that arrives nearly album-ready. It’s an easter egg for synth heads and a neat bridge between eras.
Themes: desire, fate, and the push-pull of connection
Across the record, Alexander keeps circling the same magnetic fields: first contact; the charge of being seen; the ache of almosts; the relief—and risk—of honesty. Fate crops up like a returning chorus. So do myths, used less as costumes than as mirrors.
Track highlights (no spoilers, plenty of signals)
“Polari”
An overture more than a song, built from chopped synth ideas and a handful of lines. It’s an invitation and a dare—“Say what you’ve got to say / Talk to me”—that frames the album as a conversation with a noisy world.
“Cupid’s Bow”
Desire rendered as propulsion. Harmonic shifts between major and minor keep the floor moving while the lyric sits at that flammable moment when “the one” might actually be the one. You can practically feel the arrow leaving the string.
“I Know”
A cheeky, liberating spin on identity, power, and coded recognition—yes, the hanky-code wink is intentional. The mood stays playful rather than didactic; acceptance arrives with a grin, not a lecture.
“Shadow of Love”
Yearning on a loop: the night out, the lowering of standards, the bargaining we do with ourselves when loneliness starts calling the shots. It’s the album’s thesis on the paradoxes of love, delivered at club tempo.
“Make Me a Man”
The Vince Clarke moment. Alexander writes from a Garden of Eden vantage point and lets the double entendres fly. The arrangement fuses fizzy synth patterns with an acoustic twang that nods toward Erasure without cosplaying them.
“Dizzy”
The Eurovision flashpoint returns, reclaimed. In this sequencing it reads less like damage control and more like context: an 80s-driven whirl whose references finally sit among their kin.
“Archangel”
A pep-talk in disco shoes, built around a simple mantra of permission—“You can do whatever whenever you want”—that Alexander clearly means for himself as much as for us. Earnest? Absolutely. Also affecting.
“Miss You So Much”
Sunshine poured over a minor-key ache. Think SAW brightness spiked with Italo-disco chug, engineered to make sadness feel strangely buoyant.
“When We Kiss”
The record’s big, hands-in-the-air club peak, wired with the adrenaline of a relationship at the cliff edge: love blazing, future uncertain.
“Whisper in the Waves”
The exhale. Alexander slips into myth—Calypso and Odysseus—for a meditation on holding on and letting go, water as both refuge and undertow.
Lyrical lens: codes, confessions, and camp
Alexander writes like someone fascinated by signals—secret languages, mythic archetypes, and the tiny negotiations between bodies in the dark. The camp is intentional, the sincerity unguarded. When he tips into corniness, he lets it happen; the record argues that vulnerability is cooler than cynicism.
Production notes worth hearing for
- Drums/bass: Hi-NRG punch with modern low-end weight; tempos that invite movement rather than sprinting.
- Synths: Sampler-era stabs, chorus-drenched pads, and call-and-response hooks that feel built for big rooms.
- Vocals: Clean up front with tasteful processing; occasional stutter effects nod to 80s radio tricks without leaning on Auto-Tune gloss.
How it lands: praise, caveats, and the Radio 2 question
Critical reception has clocked the album’s retro focus and craft, while noting a tug-of-war between edge and easy listening. Some tracks (Cupid’s Bow, Whisper in the Waves, Miss You So Much) are widely tagged as standouts; others are read as safer bets aimed at mainstream daytime playlists. The tension is real: Alexander wants the thrill of clubland aesthetics and the embrace of a broad audience. Polari doesn’t always square the circle—but when it does, it sparkles.
Verdict
Polari is a confident debut in name, a savvy continuation in practice: a mirror-ball confessional that treats queerness, pop history, and emotional risk as the same dancefloor. It won’t convert every skeptic, and a few choruses could be bigger given the maximal soundstage. But the best songs hit that sweet spot where nostalgia becomes fuel rather than costume. If this is Alexander drawing the map, the star he’s steering by looks bright.