Single Review: Years & Years - 'If You're Over Me'

The second single from their conceptual upcoming album, ‘Palo Santo’, Years & Years are back with a pop-filled track, called ‘If You’re Over Me’, and are very much breaking away from their usual style.

This new track follows their previous single, ‘Sanctify’, which encapsulates all the things that make Years & Years the band that stands out in the pop industry at the moment. ‘If You’re Over Me’ seems to take on a whole different persona to what we were expecting to come out of this album following ‘Sanctify’. This track can be described as nothing less than pop chart music with Olly Alexander’s vocals sounding almost like every other artist on the charts.

This single makes me question how much this band really do stand out in the music industry. There is no doubt that ‘If You’re Over Me’ is a track full of catchy lyrics in front of a bopping beat, but its just not what I was expecting the band to release next. I feel like a lot of the artists that I really love emerge with tracks that aren’t at all who I thought they were and are attempting to appeal to a mass market of pop-loving teens, like Sam Smith’s ‘Money On My Mind’: a track that will haunt me to my grave.

Nevertheless, my hopes for Years & Years second album are still very high. I think that their new album is going to smash through a boundary between pop music and highly conceptual albums.

Catch them in London’s Roundhouse on the 10th of July for a “Palo Santo Party” following the album’s release on the 6th of July.

Words by Max Herridge