Dizzy

Album: Polari (2024)
Charted: 42
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Songfacts®:

  • In December 2023, Olly Alexander announced he was jettisoning his Years & Years moniker and instead would be recording under his real name. And what better way to herald his emancipation than with a Eurovision banger? "Dizzy," Alexander's debut solo single and the UK's official entry for Eurovision Song Contest 2024, was released on March 1, 2024.
  • Composed alongside dance music producer Danny L Harle (Charli XCX, Dua Lipa, Caroline Polachek), "Dizzy" is, as Alexander himself proclaims, "not a ballad." It's a sonic homage to classic '80s synth-pop: all dizzying synths and euphoric choruses.
  • Alexander and Harle wrote "Dizzy" during the summer of 2024. "We started off with the word 'Dizzy' because it just popped into my head and I liked it. I was thinking about fun things that could make you dizzy and I remember saying 'dizzy from your kisses' so we built the song around that," Alexander explained, referring to the chorus.

    "Danny and I believe music should transport you somewhere magical and we wanted to describe this magical place in the song; a place of beautiful gardens, eternal flowers and time turning endlessly in an ecstatic loop," he continued. "We took the feeling of Dizziness and put that into the production, so there's a lot of undulating arpeggios, lilting harmonies and counter rhythms in the backing vocals."

    Alexander added that the song is musically inspired by '80s music and by acts like Erasure, Adamski, and the Pet Shop Boys.
  • The song received its radio premiere during Zoe Ball's BBC Radio 2 breakfast show. Alexander told Ball: "The song is about an overwhelming rush of love that you have for somebody and so much so that it makes you dizzy, turns your world upside down."
  • Olly Alexander's "Dizzy" shares a title with a song that topped the UK Singles Chart twice. Tommy Roe's original recording of "Dizzy" spent one week at #1 in 1969, and comedian Vic Reeves' 1990 revival was the top dog for two weeks in 1990.
  • Olly Alexander came in 18th in the Eurovision final. He received mixed reactions to his performance and received no points from the public vote.

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