Olly Alexander and Kele Okereke team up for groundbreaking duet about same-sex relationship

Consider the ground broken: Bloc Party frontman Kele Okereke and Olly Alexander have teamed up for a duet.

The two openly gay artists paired up on a new track revolving around a same-sex relationship, written and performed in the hopes of making other mainstream gay musicians acknowledge their sexuality within their lyrics.

The song “Grounds For Resentment” is a piano-led track that tells the story of a same-sex romance from two perspectives. It will be featured on Okereke’s third studio album Fatherland. 

“I remember reading something that [Olly] wrote about the use of pronouns in pop music for gay artists that I thought that was very perceptive and intelligent – that the use of pronouns was the last frontier for gay artists,” he tells The Guardian.

Listen:

“There are lots of gay acts that avoid using the term he when singing about same sex desire. It will just be a neutral term, whereas Olly understands from what I read that there is a long way to go for gay musicians in being able to describe love and desire authentically.

“So I was very happy to sing a romantic duet with him on my album, because I couldn’t think of a precedent of any out gay musicians singing a love song to one another without having to hide behind codes.”

Fatherland will be out October 6th.