 Hi I'm Shanfei and this is Sean this way and in this video I'm joined by a very special guest as lead singer of electro prop trio years and years. His debut album communion has achieved global success but he's also distinguished himself by being a public advocate for youth mental health and being an openly gay man in the mainstream music industry. His name is Oli Alexander and now he's a king under my control. I'm really interested to talk to you about being an openly gay man in the mainstream music industry. Will Young who obviously enjoyed massive success at the top of charts through pop idol who's become much more vocal in recent months about the impact of being openly gay while famous but also not being able to speak about that during the early years of his career and also the death of late George Michael who obviously was kind of a pioneer in that respect but obviously his career began before being outed and you've pretty much been open out since the start of your music career. Really early on I mean obviously everybody knew you know like the management team and the people that we all worked with and knew that I was gay but it's not really spoken about in a way it's sort of like oh you don't need to make that obvious you don't need to kind of come out and start talking about that and I actually had one media training session really early on with this woman who kind of advised me not to come out she was like you don't need to it doesn't need to be you don't need to make it a big deal like why should you why should you have to express your sexuality why does it matter you know which is all kind of like I can see where she was coming from and like I understand why that might have been the norm to tell you know like musicians in the past or whatever so after a certain point I realized actually I just I was getting this real anxiety and stress from worrying about you know what interviewers might ask me in an interview or like I felt like everything all the music was just about me and my identity in a way so I was like doesn't make any sense for me to not talk about this so yeah I just made the decision I did kind of it did feel a bit like a choice really really early on to be out as much as possible and then it kind of developed from there yeah and I'm just wondering because you've actually almost now from that starting point ended up becoming quite a vocal spokesperson as well not just openly gay but about community and political issues and I think there is kind of a debate around pop music so really like even saying like at the highest echelons of pop music so with Beyonce's formation there was kind of a lot of discussion about what is the role of artists to talk about politics and whether or not actually there are still a school of thought that political messaging through mainstream music is in some ways inappropriate or it's kind of shoehorning something that doesn't belong there and that it could be damaging for the artist too and that you kind of get boxed in as a professional gay yeah um totally well have you been worried about that I think that's probably something I prescribed to as well in the past I thought you know well these people it's not their job there aren't politicians it's not you know is it really their job to be discussing these issues and but then I suppose now I've kind of come I have a different mindset about those things and I think we're all kind of living in a time where just and really being alive is being political you know in all the choices and decisions and things you make probably they do have some political kind of aspect to them whether you like it or not and I do think you kind of if you do have a platform you that's a privilege really that people are listening to what you say whether so really you can make a choice to kind of be political overtly political or not we all have responsibilities as human beings to just kind of try and do our best you know and that involves kind of helping each other and I think actually yeah if you remain silent and political on things you're not really helping anybody or yourself yeah and I think it's kind of interesting in pop music that with queer communities in pop music is that actually pop music has always been kind of integral to queer community formation and to and to queer culture's understanding of itself so through the prism of gay icons like from Judy Garland pretty much on words that queer people sort of denied a place in pop culture or visibility have kind of used pop music as well to articulate a lot of their own political struggle but there has been this huge displacement that actually there still aren't that many openly queer people in that music and that we still haven't really called up to that despite the fact that we're supposed to be living in a bastion of LGBT legal rights I think actually for a queer person to reach the same kind of level of influence that someone like you know Judy Garland or Beyonce or you know Ed Sheeran to have they need to overcome so many steps along the way and I think it is going to take a while for a queer person to get to that same level just because the way you know you need to have the support of just so many different groups of people to get to that level you know to then even but I think you know it's so I don't think we're quite there yet one of the things that you're saying as well which I do find really interesting is how historically you know a lot of our kind of gay icons have been women you know heterosexual cisgendered women who we you know LGBT community have really kind of deified and identified with in a way that's maybe actually not is it that relevant to our to our lives I don't know but and then it's sort of a question that's like why is that and why do we find it so hard maybe to support another kind of artist I don't know it's it's I don't know it's just I feel like men make quite bad gay icons do you want to be like queer positive while you're gay icon totally um yeah well I mean but yeah I think that is largely because of like you know cis heterosexual women's femininity and pop culture has been kind of like loaded with all this meaning for queer people yeah and I think it's the first introduction I think actually Matthew Todd's book Stray Jacket had a really good section I think on this on why it's particularly for young gay men your first kind of maybe like it's your first introduction to pop music is usually with these like these these women who have these almost kind of who are these like extraordinary women that they often have these quite like tragic storylines in a way like Whitney Houston and Britney Spears and we identify with this kind of brittle femininity yeah and that's kind of because we don't see it reflected in kind of male stuff I don't know it's yeah it's interesting it is it is not making any points but it's interesting um so there are different types of you know of gay representation you can be out as a gay man but I think one of the things that I find interesting about political discourse around certainly like gay male sexuality is that it is now obviously acceptable on the basis that you conform particularly to heterosexual notions of sex but what's quite often there um and I was thinking about this um obviously with George Michael's death is that if there's any hint of kind of like untoward or kind of especially queerness in sex life or talking about gay men's sex lives in a way that isn't about actually being in a monogamous relationship that mirrors um heterosexuality there's still quite a level of harsh media judgment um about that I'm not going to necessarily name names but there are obviously there have been examples in the media of gay men you know high profile gay men having had lurid stories about their sex lives published and I'm just wondering because I know with Desire you did a video that was quite like you know explicitly pointed towards a more sexualized notion of queerness and do you feel that's quite a dangerous game in particular you know I think a lot of the like you're saying discourse around um LGBT rights is all kind of centered around love and and finding a partner and maybe getting married and like that's all great and really relevant but actually there's so many other different kind of sexualities and different sort of ways to have a relationship different ways to love on or be or even if you're asexual do you know mean that we need to also like highlight and give room to um and so that was kind of part of the reason why I was like actually you know I'm just going to try and be asex positive as possible and it definitely freaked some people out they were like people aren't going to like this it's too you know and it's but it's crazy you know they just like we have this one music video for um the song worship where you know there's no explicit male or male action at all I lick the windshield of a car as you do you know and they were like we can't have that gotta cut it gotta cut it out and you just think if I was a woman doing this you know there would be no you know they wouldn't there would be no they just there would be no question yeah but you know and the video wouldn't get shown on daytime music channels and everything gets edited so much and I think we we do have a culture that is very sort of doesn't doesn't want to see any of that side you know if it's if we have to sort of like a safe I'm sort of talking mostly about gay men here but like we have like a safe gay man in who feels like non-threatening then then that's acceptable but anything that's sort of other than that I think I think can be a bit hard for some people to deal with I guess this kind of reason to like the mental the mental health stuff you're doing in your documentary yes growing up gay I guess one of the things that I'm interested in is when your approach to do a documentary and they say well you've spoken about mental health and and we're going to do this documentary it's sort of focused around you about lgbt people and mental health and there have been quite shocking statistics from stonewall and stuff this year about that yeah is what do you hope in your mind you want to make it because you want to like because we always say like let's raise awareness but it's like how that translates politically I know you've mentioned that you have a crush on Jeremy Corbyn is it that you hope that Jeremy's going to be my boyfriend it's all one long bio that essentially that you are just like you do a tv documentary then it's written about in the press then you know through social media get shared around then maybe hopefully someone shows like a junior politician it and then they show it to get someone more senior is that what you hope that kind of material well I think that's part of it I think there's there is one aspect that is kind of a bit campaign led and like political in a sense because actually there there really is stuff that we can do into you know a policy level to help young lgbt kids you know specifically in schools I really think that would be really so it would be a really great way of getting like lgbt inclusive sexual relationship education and that is something that was part of the reason why I wanted to make something like that but also really I think it was an opportunity to kind of access a you know quite a wide audience and introduce something that maybe then they haven't really come into contact with lgbt mental health and you know the idea that like you know families might watch it and parents of an lgbt kid might have a better understanding and that's I think that was kind of that was a big part of the decision as well yeah I think there's probably a fear that we've just had gay pride in London that there are a huge amount of brands there are lots of people there's a lot of media coverage of that and it seems very much like we're there everything's accepted and actually a lot of the legal rights you know in Britain you should be grateful because we actually have some of the most you know sophisticated and progressive laws in place which on the one hand could be true but on the other it's kind of like you know you have to kind of the conversation has shifted to be like well actually there's still quite a lot of social damage yeah exactly it takes place that is it can't be covered by an act of harm and yeah completely I think you know we should feel really you know good about the laws that are in place and the rights that we do have that we have achieved so far but but but not forgetting that actually attitudes take much longer I think to change and and and you know the experience of a young person growing up queer that experience has not been you know magically made perfect because we have almost the same rights to straight people it just hasn't and I've really noticed that some of my straight friends have been really shocked by the statistics that have come out recently from Stonewall as well about young you know young trans people being the most at risk in our society yeah young gay people being bullied it's you know it's so prevalent and I think they they have been really shocked because I think there is this kind of idea that it's fine and you know you can get married and and this is maybe like a bit of a non sequitur is that the right yeah that's it um I think you can go non sec I think you can shorten it like I um I got to a really bad habit of um of shortening everything until until I like found myself saying prima jack I was like that is literally like you know if anything deserves a shortening it's prima jack oh dear well it's a non sec a non sec to pride and how I don't know how you feel about this but because a lot of my queer friends have quite an uncomfortable relationship with pride yeah and I think there's a feeling that it's become massively corporate and it's sort of just like an excuse for people to advertise and like for Tesco to like throw out food and keep like especially this year with London pride I know there was because all their advertising was sort of seemed to be centered around like straight people saying it's cool to have a gay friend or something and it felt like who is pride for anymore like is it still for our community and if not why and how can we make better help you know engage how can we better engage with it I think there's a yeah I think there's a huge difficulty there about um it happened with gay rights and it's interesting that we're probably going to approach that moment um with Jeremy Corbyn and the and the Conservatives announcing they're going to reform the gender recognition act for trans people is it's very tempting I think when you're offered a bit of kind of like a bit of political solace to just like bite their hand off and um and increasingly just be grateful and then actually to kind of forget and what that kind of includes is obviously forgetting the people who are most in need in your own community and so I think there is a huge risk with pride events in particular that they stop serving yeah I like I had a transphobic experience at Pride really just like for fuck's sake yeah um what happened oh someone a woman called me overturned so I was expecting it's going to be like she's going to tell me I'm beautiful you look amazing she was like you're very beautiful and I was like thank you and she was like you had me fooled and I was like wow and then when I was like that's actually very upsetting you probably should apologize to me um she really went off on one and I was like you've come to Pride I think one of the interesting things because mental health is a difficult more difficult issue like gay marriage for example or um the equal age of consent or even repealing section 28 which was done by active parliament it's actually not that hard for parliament to sit down in the path of vote and do that something like um mental health requires money and I think it's really interesting that um a lot of the first things that happen the LGBT rights are the ones that don't actually like to actually allow gay people to marry doesn't require any money um and something like LGBT mental health is actually going to explicitly require oh yeah um giving people free healthcare albeit mental health services exactly yeah you're totally right I mean LGBT services in that mental health well it have just been completely demolished and also you know it does you're right it takes so much it would take money to also train doctors and train gps to understand maybe LGBT specific issues or how to do you know what I mean like because yeah those are relevant and if you have a gp that is completely doesn't understand that then you're not going to have any hope of accessing the the care that you that you need but to be honest across the whole second you know across all the health services the money there seems to be no money so it does seem like it's a really really um yeah tough uphill struggle yeah I'm interested about because obviously some of this is you know related specifically to mental health and isn't just about queer people in mental health but mental health in general is that mental health itself is still hugely stigmatized and I'm wondering like you know how do you feel about you know having been very open what surprises me sometimes is that I feel that we make ground and you know the royal family do advocacy for mental health and then you'll see um quite stigmatizing headlines about use of antidepressants and whether you know or um or we just talk about depression and anxiety and not about um some of the more kind of ugly side effects of like chronic mental illness um and I do feel that one of the things that homophobia and definitely transphobia and mental health politics are going to always be tied because to really to really trash queer people you have to kind of also um you you also have to be like they're all crazy and and then you are actually being rude about people who might identify as crazy yeah you're concerned as well about being open about your own mental health but it's just for the fear that you might be like written off for me I found I found sharing my own story and trauma was part of my kind of healing process okay of my recovery so you know and that has helped me just as on a personal level you know so that's why I sort of don't have to I have some some conflicting feelings about it but I sort of knew that for me that that it did help me kind of get over some stuff but um yeah I don't it's it's it's going to take a while I think for us to kind of reach a place where we feel like we're addressing things in the right way I think celebrity culture um is you know is quite a difficult one because actually there is quite a you know if you look at Amy Winehouse review of Britney Spears 2007 like people still will talk about like her meltdown I know like almost like a sassy way and actually um or it's a meme and I think it's kind of interesting that that's actually quite like that's perhaps about women and mental health about if you actually push famous women into a misogynistic male you know celebrity culture that actually when that kind of cracks and breaks and that the mental health problems are exposed but then it becomes you know that becomes like you know and we all participate in it totally I mean I think a large part of celebrity culture is is making fun of women it just is really and like poking fun at and like and I get it because you know it's so it's so predominant that kind of and I and I think I probably used to take part in it as well and then over the years I've gone actually this makes me really uncomfortable and I don't think it's right well it's your headlines now so like you know it'd be your circle of shame so that's exactly it's in your interest yeah um you made documentary that obviously went out on BBC very mainstream um and was you know obviously talking to young LGBT themselves but also to people who are not used to these issues I think one of the interesting discussions as well about LGBT mental health is how within LGBT politics within communities within the way that we organize politically but also socialize our own relationships about the extent to which mental health affects our political relationships with each other so you know so for example the sexual competitiveness and body image issues of gay men are often reinforced among gay men by themselves but that can be something you literally experience as a young person I don't experience it anymore because um I transcended and you don't experience it anymore because like you're a pop star no one's going to tell you to go away in GAYY but you know but I'm sure you remember those experiences and in trans politics there there can be huge um you know on the one hand I think what's great about kind of queer politics is that I'm sure you've seen a lot of it takes place online and that's because I think like young queer people particularly not fully out if you're at home if you're like if you're a trans person you're in your parents bedroom and they don't know that you are a trans girl or whatever you can you can go on to tumbler and you can say my pronouns is she her and you can incarnate yourself online politically as the person that you can't be outside of that I think there's a toxic underside to that too you know some of the nicer things that content notices and you know being respectful and talking about issues of race and intersectionality can be really positive but on the other hand it can also cause you know people don't realize that they are still traumatized needing acceptance and then that can become that kind of talk about um how to help us can be just as toxic as as what we were doing before yeah I mean I think I absolutely right like you said it so I wish I could yeah articulate that as well as you just did because it's right you're right you know there is this it's really a really positive aspect of you know online communities and the and people having access to communities that they otherwise would never have been able to but at the same time I think it's made the kind of conversation just very extra you know like one sided or extreme and it's sort of just people attacking each other and you know and and some of the some of the like really intense misogyny I see online is from gay men or some of the transphobia I see is from gay men and or from sections different sections of community or racism and it's not it's it's hard to know how to address that in a help it's like how we can stop that from happening you know really if we're all and if we're still all doing it online you know it's I don't know if we're going to reach that point where with yeah because I don't know is it do you agree with the grouping lgbt I always find this interesting do you do you believe there's a rationale for that when there's so much diversity amongst us like are we really a community is it is it really a sustainable umbrella it's worth it because I think we have a lot of stuff support we can offer each other and stuff we can learn from each other you know and I think that in that aspect it's good I'm so happy to be grouped in an lgbt queer community because I I feel happy there and it's but it's I think it is you know the word community is kind of problematic in itself you know and it's like it doesn't it is very hard because we are so diverse and all the experiences are so different you can't you know so I think it does make it hard for lots of people to really feel like they are included yeah because they often aren't really the reality is lots of people don't feel included in the community no that's true and I think it depends what you yeah what you mean by it because I think you know what my kind of standard political answer is I think that's a political identity and it's because we have the same enemies exactly what I agree maybe like a perfectly free society where they weren't there wasn't the kind of like you know personal because actually the home phone on the street doesn't really care how how you identify gender-wise mm-hmm they largely just care about how you look and what that means for them and I think you know there's that kind of we have the same enemies but also kind of the same structural things like housing and yeah you know experience of prison and kind of healthcare because even like you know trans people obviously have unique health needs but like the prep yeah struggle in kind of you know you just showed again that kind of yeah I think we exactly huge health we face a lot of the similar sort of obstacles similar struggles in you know it's hard I feel like the the the possible benefits and positives from being in the community together outweigh currently outweigh what I think the negatives or drawbacks could be but I think it's really you know I still feel like we can have a conversation about how we are how different parts of the community are different but still support each other and still feel like we can be a community but still recognize the differences I feel like that is possible it's just I don't know why we haven't quite got there yet I don't know but it's possible that's so uplifting solidarity is possible guys that seems like the perfect note to tie up when we haven't quite resolved the answer but it ends a segment nicely so Ollie thank you so much for joining me thank you for having me in this wonderful garden I know I know I just thought let's go so extra let me know what you think about LGBT mental health let me know in the comments below tweet me at Sean Fay use the hashtag Sean sway and don't forget to follow Navarra media at Navarra media thank you so much for watching bye